


A Better Life Goin' Nowhere

by Findtheroot



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Break Up, Complicated - Freeform, F/F, Forced Pregnancy, Loyalty, Post-Break Up, Unplanned Pregnancy, head in a mess, personal growth for maggie, prisoner, when someone stops loving you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-05-05 03:04:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 52,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14607855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findtheroot/pseuds/Findtheroot
Summary: Nettles stood there with a bright-eyed smile and an outstretched hand holding a warm mug filled with liquid life. He was essentially still a detective rookie, but his couch was the only one offered when a broken Maggie Sawyer needed a couch cushion while retreating from that apartment, that planned life with Alex Danvers.She was determined not to allow this breakup break her.Sure, she could break down, cry, scream and beg. But that was not Maggie Sawyer.Her style was never to plead when someone didn’t want her. Maggie had learned her loyalty was only to herself.Everyone else left, pushed her away or didn’t care.Alex Danvers would not break her.





	1. Chapter 1

The brown broken down leather couch creaked when she rolled her shoulders and then her hips to stretch out the stiffness from the lumpy relic.  
She looked to her left from the couch and saw her bags packed still sitting perfectly next to the matching loveseat.  
It wasn’t a dream.  
She clenched her eyes and inhaled sharply to keep the sob at bay.  
Her heart shattered all over again.  
Her eyes burned from the previous day’s events. It was all too heavy. She swung her left arm up to cover her eyes, but it did little to block the reality of her life as it stood today.  
The previous 12 hours sunk in like a gunshot wound to the chest. She was alone again. On the run, if you will. She couldn’t stop. It would do her no good because she had nothing left to hold on to in this version of her life. She couldn’t see the future or even the next day, but she had to persevere. It was what she did, who she was.  
She’d done it when she was a teen and she didn’t know any better.  
She didn’t have to prove anything - to anyone – anymore.  
Deep breath in like she was in a yoga studio.  
Then standing up, she stretched her short frame and headed to the kitchen for coffee.  
Nettles stood there with a bright-eyed smile and an outstretched hand holding a warm mug filled with liquid life. He was essentially still a detective rookie, but his couch was the only one offered when a broken Maggie Sawyer needed a couch cushion while retreating from that apartment, that planned life with Alex Danvers.  
She was determined not to allow this breakup break her. Sure, she could break down, cry, scream and beg. But that was not Maggie Sawyer.  
Her style was never to plead when someone didn’t want her. Maggie had learned her loyalty was only to herself. Everyone else left, pushed her away or didn’t care.  
Alex Danvers would not break her.  
Maggie Sawyer vowed to rebuild herself and her life, stronger and sturdier than she ever thought possible. In this morning’s light, she had no idea that life planned a curve so sharp she’d never imagined such a possibility that she could survive.  
In that burnt orange kitchen with little chef statues and ornaments, Maggie took the warm cup of coffee and turned on her heel walking slowly to the open window in the corner.  
Admiring the seventh-floor view from the fire escape, she lit a cigarette and inhaled sharply. Her lungs burned.  
She figured she deserved the pain. So, she inhaled longer the second time and held it until it felt like she’d pass out.  
She was homesick.  
But not her home.  
The rising sun danced over the skyscrapers, she squinted at the brighter light. It was a wrong turn, she thought and smirked at her own optimistic mind about Alex Danvers.  
Going through the motions, Maggie Sawyer, went about her routine day at the National City Police Department as its star detective for the Science Division. She never thought she’d end up here, but that’s exactly where she was: going through the motions.  
She wanted what she didn’t have, wanted who didn’t want her.  
Was she glutton for punishment? She had thought more than once. Why couldn’t she just shake this and move on? Alex told her she wasn’t enough. Maggie would never be enough.  
It was the story of Maggie’s life.  
So, as she had in the past, she decided to ignore it. She got under so many people and, technically over their sweaty bodies, that she lost count. None more than twice. She couldn’t have anyone catching feelings.  
Weeks later, she circled Alex Danvers’ stone apartment building, her home, nope, the former home. She circled it so many times she would have sworn, she had worn a path in the grey concrete outside. But nothing had changed. Not even Alex Danvers, who seemed to not even notice that Maggie was gone.  
Or at least that’s the way it looked to Maggie when Alex would duck in and out of the building not noticing Maggie standing mere yards away, watching.  
Their eyes never met. Maggie clung to the shadows and the woman she pledged to love forever was none the wiser.  
Maggie’s clock and heart continued to tick.  
No amount of alcohol stopped those ticks.  
But God did she try. With every available beautiful woman and every bottle that was not tied down or previously spoken for.  
Three months had gone by and it was a blur. She woke up one more time in a new apartment, only furnished with old tossed out hand me downs she’d found on the street while stumbling home. Whether the stumbling had been with an unnamed beautiful woman was only a matter of semantics for the day.  
Then one bleary morning reading her email, Maggie’s breath stalled and the chief’s words resonated with her. It tempted her to spend a year as an alien expert liaison three thousand miles away and learn what she can about alien relations from the best.  
She applied and was accepted.  
The Chief was clearly excited and ushered her out of the department to prepare. Generously, she would have two weeks to pack and prepare her life to be on hold in National City for a year. He didn’t know she didn’t need that much time.  
She spent it drinking and pacing outside Alex’s building, waiting for the thunder of the moment when she’d confront her ex, tell her she was leaving for a year. But she never did it.  
Two weeks before her departure, she just needed her passport and a bag to hold some semblance of her life that she was leaving behind in National City. The rest was thrown to the curb or placed in a small storage unit she’d prepaid for the next two years.  
Maggie Sawyer texted Alex Danvers when she tossed her tiny closet-like apartment three times over and could not find her passport.  
With reddened cheeks, she learned, said passport remained locked in Alex’s safe.  
Thankfully, Alex didn’t put up a fight and said she’d mailed it to the given address, which only took three days. Thanks, NC postal officials for being so efficient, Maggie had 11 days to dwell on Alex and their “happy life.”  
One drunken night, Maggie mused to herself that she had dodged a bullet of having to talk to Alex because the text reply never came asking why she wanted her passport or where was she headed.  
But the next bullet, a literal one, the detective wouldn’t be so lucky.  
It struck her shoulder, sharply.  
Immediately, she knew this was not like any other time before because unlike the lead caliber she was familiar with, this particular one left her immobile.  
Her body frozen, but her mind remained calm and open as she saw herself being carried away to a white van by two men. Watching the street lights and then the interior of the van coming into view, Maggie didn’t feel anything.  
She guessed she should be thankful, but she tried to remember each bump in the road until the world shrunk and went black.  
Four days later, though Maggie didn’t know that, she woke up to a strange sensation on her hands and feet. Never did she imagine being strapped to a table to create such feelings.  
Her hands were flat, pressed to the cold metal table like an exhibit for a new insect. She could wiggle her toes, but not much else. Though she could feel her entire body.  
Maggie listened intently before she moved in an attempt to get her bearings of the situation. She heard hushed conversations. She heard machines whirling with activity. She heard her own heartbeat thumping in her chest and a monitor to the right keeping track.


	2. Losing herself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie faces her new reality of being a prisoner. She is forced to learn a new life and loses all of it in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: There's mention of being held captive, forced injections, etc. If that's not your cup of tea, find another one to drink from, please.

Temptation got the best of her and soon she couldn’t resist so Maggie Sawyer opened her brown eyes to find even darker ones glaring back at her. But the smile pointed at her was one that she would have recognized anywhere.

How could it be, she thought before recognizing the owner as someone she’d only met once although his photos dotted Alex’s apartment.

Jeremiah Danvers.

Internally, Maggie Sawyer flinched, but she didn’t move her eyes from his. She would be damned if she shrunk at a threat. He laughed and mumbled about Alex always seeking those who defied authority, even if she was the authority.

She didn’t know the man, but immediately she hated him and knew Alex would never save her father.

He was CADMUS.

He had betrayed his daughter and now Maggie was strapped down left to his mercy.

Jeremiah’s smile turned to a snarl as he held a needle up and pushed it into the bulging vein in her forearm.

Her world blurred until her organs felt as if they were being seared on a grill.

She heard Jeremiah laugh. She felt weak. Nauseated.

The remainder of that first week tested Maggie Sawyer’s resolve as burning liquids were forced into her veins and those thick white straps holding her to the table wore a bit on the edges from her constant jerks, spams, and tremors – some to free herself to no avail, while others were drug-induced her body fighting at the pain she was forced to endure.

Her screams echoed in her head and off the concrete walls to deaf ears of those involved. They recorded her movements, her reactions, her functions and her changes. She didn’t know the purpose, but Jeremiah had been planning for a year these very moments.

Since meeting the brunette, he knew she was the one for this experiment. He coveted her and his plan. If only Maggie knew what that was. Her mind was never lucid for more than a couple hours a day.

                                                                                              ********

During one particular bright blue injection, Maggie begged any God listening for a stiff drink and reprieve from the torture she suspected was only beginning.

Sadly, she was right.

Jeremiah came by often with question after question about her life with Alex, her intentions, why they seemed to suddenly break up.

Maggie decided that he was a pompous asshole and he didn’t deserve Alex’s devotion. But after the umpteenth serum was administered, Maggie knew the evening’s events were set for her and him. He asked. Over. And Over.

She tried to remain silent. Then she would lie.

She tried. And she continued to lie.

But by the third day of this blue liquid IV, Maggie was broken.

Her mind played tricks on her and she became vulnerable to his dark eyes that often-mirrored Alex’s intense stare like when she was working through a problem in her head. His eyes stared at Maggie like life and death depended on her answers to his questions.

His inquiries felt like assaults. He quizzed her about Alex, Kara, J’onn, Alex, Supergirl’s interests, Eliza, Alex, Lena, Lillian, Alex and on and on. Maggie had been on the giving and receiving end of many interrogations, but none combined with these drugs that he used.

So, she lied even more. Honesty was not a luxury she could afford when he came to talk.

Her mind began to deteriorate and she felt it.

In off times she was locked in a concrete cell that housed the same amenities as one down at county lockup. She took it as a reprieve from being strapped to the table and injected with those chemicals.

In the 184 days of this game, she became reckless. She had learned how to be tough for this situation. But it wasn’t enough. She fought her captors and she lost. Her ribs were bruised, her nose was broken as were two fingers. She was forced to remain in shackles inside her cell for the next few days when they came to get her.

But she daydreamed about the time she fought back. She remembered it clearly. Once they allowed her free of the restraints as they guided her down a hallway, and she broke away, tried to run, but they were stronger and faster. Not to mention, she had no idea where she was held, which way was out and the handprint scanners at the doors likely would not recognize her petite hand in comparison to the men who held her and scanned their palms to allow passage to other hallways and rooms.

The next day after the fight, the leg shackles, chain around her stomach and handcuffs return for the hallway walk.

She was their prisoner.

After days and days, Maggie felt her body breaking, as if every fiber was being shredded. She didn’t know who she was anymore. Her skin paled. She even thought it glowed a dim blue like the IVs. She was sure of it one evening after a tray of what they called food was pushed into her cell and she sat eating with her fingers.

Staring at them covered in a corn casserole loaf, she swore they were translucent and her blood flowed under her skin the color of a blue moon. She raised her feet and saw the same. If she could only see her reflection in a mirror.

Was she still herself? Maggie thought.

 The situation was useless, but she didn’t know that.

                                                                                                ********

Maggie imagined someone looking for her, missing her.

Maybe Alex.

Maybe Nettles, a new friend.

Or even one of the countless women she'd bedded since the breakup.

But sadly, it was the perfect game because Maggie was allegedly 3,000 miles away to everyone in National City.

No one besides Maggie Sawyer was any of the wiser about her confinement because they covered their tracks so beautifully.

She was gone. No traces.

She left willingly and would never return.

Her beloved, Alex Danvers, if she went looking would find that Maggie Sawyer willingly left the country after receiving her passport for a consulting job. The officials at the job in the other country would report that a Maggie Sawyer never arrived at their border.

Maggie Sawyer was a missing person. A ghost who vanished with no traces in either place.

Unbeknownst to Maggie Sawyer, she was buried in the depths of National City. As a matter of fact, her familiar yoga pants that she had worn the night before her abduction remained a staple in her closet until the seams gave way and she had to toss them for new ones provided by her captors.

On the 229th day of Maggie’s captivity, she learned no matter how hard she struggled against the restraints or the doors, they would never let her go. She was trapped. She succumb to that fate and her new reality sank in.

Defeated, Maggie cried herself to sleep that night. It was a coherent day for her, as more and more were afforded to her. Her mind was clear and sound. She knew she was different now, but didn’t quite understand how.

But she did grasp that she would be theirs until they were done with her. And even then, she would have their scars and the memories of what had happened to her woven into her soul with every day of torture.

Most days it was a slew of men dressed in tactical gear or physician coats with tablets to input data. But other days as of late, she was left in her concrete cell. Not creature comforts but a cot and toilet and sink in the corner.

She laughed one day that she was in a glorified jail cell. She thought of all the people she had sent to prison. It kept her sane to recount cases, suspects, defendants from their trials and how she had survived them all.

The cell was twice as large as those at county, so she could practice her yoga and often spar with her imagined shadow. Her meals were delivered through a slot in the wall. The door was fortified steel, resistant to her hopeful escape. She would daydream of fleeing, but not for long. She couldn’t dwell on the what ifs, but the when. So instead she planned, how she could evade her captors.

But when the gases would emerge from the ceiling she knew it would be a day spent in the lab being subjected to various injections and tests. It took 4 to 6 minutes before she would be overcome by the potent air and pass out. She tried every way she could think of to resist. She held her breath until she passed out one day, but she just woke up to the same result - being tied down to a table to submit to their tests. Another day, she held her pillow over her mouth, but the men just waited at the door until she was forced to breathe the gases and by then the room was filled with it.

She didn't understand what changed from her walks down the hallway to the test chambers to being put to sleep briefly for the same tests. Maggie spent days, weeks studying that change, but she never found an answer during that time.

When she’d wake from the gas-induced sleep, it was always the same scenario of being strapped to a table with an IV of various liquids flowing into her body. Some glowed like the prettiest colors she’d ever seen, while others were just there.

Some days she was coherent and could remember all the events ever how painful they may be, while other days of testing she barely remembered her name afterward.

On those days, it could take a week for her to recover enough to even feel like herself, and for her body cooperate from those treatments, as the men pretending to be scientist called them.

White noise was pumped into her cell after one day of hard testing. She didn’t understand, but she figured it gave her something new to focus on for a while.

After a couple of days, the noise was driving her crazy. Her heartbeat banged in her head. She screamed into the air. The white noise levels increased.

Her cell lights also changed to a neon light blue.

Maggie shrugged the morning she noticed the new color. She actually liked it. Better than the harsh overhead fluorescent lights that had illuminated her cell.

Her food trays also improved.

She got actual meals now instead of slop. She was fed complete meals along with snacks and protein bars or shakes. It tasted like actual food too.

Maggie ate like it was her last meal. The memories of the early days burned into her brain of how the food was just like prison loaf and was repulsive.

Those were times she was starved.

So now she ate everything.

Sliding the tray through the slot, Maggie often asked for more.

On every third day for the next 12 hours, whoever was on the other side would slide protein bars and sandwiches through the slot.

Maggie focused on those days, thankful for the favors.

It was her only highlight.

She didn’t know the face behind the fingers that shoved those precious snacks through the sharp metal slot, but she’d kiss their hand if she could. That extra food kept her sane some days.

It gave her a purpose. Maggie had never been a big eater, but now she craved these treats.

Then one day, the slot never opened. It went five days, then it had been eight days and nothing extra was delivered. She screamed, pounded her fists into the wall.

The men never came during those eight days. She never left her quarters.

But on the ninth day she woke up strapped on the table, Maggie begged and pleaded to the man in the coat for food. Her stomach was turned on its side. Her body was raging.

She had never been this hangry. So, she pleaded. She complied with their every test and even narrated her emotions, her body’s reactions and any other thing she could think of to them. They scribbled on their tablets quickly.

After only a couple hours, she was hoisted up.

The table would tilt upright with her still strapped in. The leg shackles were applied first and then her hands were cuffed to a chain around her waist. The white straps that held her hands flat on the table were released.

She could move. Only slightly tho.

The men walked her back to her cell. She shuffled her feet thanks to the leg shackles.

She knew this drill. It was a practiced routine now.

And when she arrived back, she found two meals waiting on the floor.

Once she was uncuffed and the door clamped shut, Maggie devoured it. Everything.

Her stomach was the same taunt body part she’d had since she was 16, so she never blinked an eye about consuming more calories.

The visits to the lab and painful injections tapered off again, but they still came for her.

The gases would incapacitate her and she’d wake up in a room where she was ordered via a loudspeaker to kick, punch or charge at whatever she wanted to, often dummies that looked like her father, Alex, her old lieutenant or any other acquaintance.

She was sparring with people, she was talking to them and interacting she thought. But they were all dummies. They never spoke or moved. But she did and saw them doing the same.

Maggie had lost perspective. She’d been held captive too long.

She wasn’t objective as to what was being done to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


	3. A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So we are back finding out what's going on with Maggie and what is to come. It's a big one. Brace yourselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay. It's all on my shoulders.  
> But I hope this makes up for the delay. I've got another chapter in the works.   
> Thank you for staying with this one.  
> My muse is going to places I never imagined. Buckle in for this ride.

The rituals of injections or sparring with her dummies continued for weeks or months. Maggie had lost track of time. She had lost herself.

Jeremiah Danvers had been suspiciously gone during most of this. He made a couple of appearances that Maggie could remember. But he always stood off to the side, or at least what she could see from the side of her eye since her head was often strapped to the table. The men forbade movement and Maggie never sat still for very long in her cell just for that reason.

But Jeremiah began to stay in the room. This week she had been brought in every day and injected with a glowing red IV. The lights continued to remain a glowing blue. Maggie had gotten to where she didn’t even notice. Though she did miss the sunlight. She felt like she was in a constant state of midnight during a full moon.

She had never been hurt but for their experiments where they electrocuted her, injected her or poked her. So, waking up naked strapped to the table caused agitated her. She knew it meant some nefarious was planned.

Were they planning surgery on her? Did they want to see her organs? Harvest one for scrutiny? Amputate a limb?

Her mind buzzed with possibilities until she landed on the thought that only men had been in the room. Every time she was brought it. She never saw another woman.

She panicked. She fought harder than she ever had before. She would be damned if she allowed one of them to have their way with her. She had yet to be in that position and this was not something she would allow to happen to herself.

An hour went by. But Maggie had no concept to time anymore. Being held in a concrete cell in an underground facility with no real human interaction would do that to a person. She was almost a feral at this point, only following their orders to keep her food flowing and the shackles at bay.

Then suddenly the heavy doors swished open and a woman in a lab coat walked in. She held a clipboard. Unlike all the men who held tablets, she had a pen and paper. The woman looked at Maggie curiously. Or at least that’s what Maggie thought, but she couldn’t really study the woman because she was still strapped to this awful table.

Maggie suddenly became shy. She was naked. In front of some strange woman. Then Maggie was turned on. She hadn’t seen another woman in so long.

Her mind was not hers anymore.

The woman made some notes and then left. But not before releasing Maggie from the table and throwing some clothing at her from a nearby table.

Maggie scrambled to pick up the clothing and put it on.

Then the men with tactical gear, guns and tasers, which they loved to use, returned. One held her shackles and handcuffs. Maggie knew the drill. She complied.

The days went by. It’d been six weeks since the day she’d found herself naked. The men came to her cell with the shackles, but the gases had not been used.

Maggie bowed her head and held her arms out in a form of surrender for them to shackle her. They took her to a smaller room. She knew this was where they only drew her blood. She had fought against all of this early on, but now she had conceded this was her life.

                                                                ****

Maggie Sawyer, who loved Alex Danvers more than life itself, had lost the DEO agent because of one dispute: babies.

Or children to be exact.

But here Maggie sat on her concrete floor as a captive, with a smeared black and white photo of the life she carried inside of her. The father or the means to which she ended up with a slightly swollen abdomen in this fortified room in a mystery building remained unknown, so Maggie stood and went to the table that contained water and a cup of pills. Prenatal vitamins she surmised based on their shape.

Looking toward the tiny camera in the corner of the room, Maggie toasted toward it and swallowed the cocktail proudly in one gulp followed by a sip of water. She figured she would protect herself and her baby if her captors at least offered the option.

If only her time spent in that concrete room was so easy.

Then she turned on her side away from the cameras and laid down in her bed and allowed the tears to escape her eyes. She didn’t understand anything anymore. Her reality had changed to moments.

So, the table had been a new addition since she learned she was pregnant. She also had a rocking chair and other creature comforts like soft blankets, pillows, and some books.

Maggie devoured the books. At first, she thought she’d forgotten how to read. But after a few minutes of thumbing through the pages, she remembered everything. She escaped to world of Little Women, Jane Eyre, Mrs Dalloway and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maggie was so thankful for the distractions. She’d read every book, but now it was like a new adventure and she was teen reading them for the first time. They were the most precious thing Maggie had in her confinement so she cared for them as if they were precious diamonds and guarded them.

Maggie continued to take the pills, provided once a day. Her meals were measured and counted, she figured. They were tasty and later even conformed to her previous life’s vegan diet. There also were additives through snacks, she thought for the baby’s health.

But why her?

Why now?

Why chose her to have this experimental baby?

Was this really even a baby?

Was Jeremiah just toying with his daughter’s life through her and with this baby, Maggie thought recklessly and seriously when she needed more reality to ground her to the situation.

Jeremiah visited with her when she was taken for blood draws, measurements and other tests. But he never questioned her again. He only stared and observed her. The corners of his mouth drew up in a smile each time, but Maggie kept her head down. She didn’t want to confirm any of his moments.

She could tell he wanted to question her about her thoughts on being pregnant, but he didn’t. She was still a detective and could read people. Though her mind was not as sharp as it once had been because she wasn’t around people like she had been. She had lost her edge and surrender to a degree to her circumstances.

Her belly continued to grow. As did other parts of her body and her libido. She only thought of Alex on those days her libido needed it. She needed that release.

But afterwards, she’d chuckle to herself mostly that Alex was not likely thinking of her.

A baby gay when she left, Maggie imagined Alex living the life that Maggie herself had experience in college and even more recently when Alex told her she wasn’t enough. Women to the left and to the right, all willing to be expert teachers for whatever Alex had yet to learn. Beautiful women readying Alex for their wants and needs. Being there for her every want and need and being able to be a mother – the one thing Maggie wouldn’t change about herself for Alex.

Now what? Maggie thought and rubbed her growing belly.

But mostly, Maggie longed for the sun in her eyes. The warmth that would fall over her bones after a long day at the precinct when she stepped outside of those double doors. When she stood on the roof of her building or Alex’s and just drained a beer while letting the cracks of the day come together.

Maggie memorized the room for the umpteenth time and thought of how she could escape. Where she would go if she did. Was anything still the same out there on the outside?

Maggie had no idea where she was or even who she was anymore.

Maggie also daydreamed of the baby she carried. She’d rub her growing belly and wonder what the baby would look like. It’s lineage up for the imagination. More days than not, Maggie dreamt of having Alex’s child.

It was a fantasy she could dream in. How she could give Alex everything she wanted before she told Maggie she wasn’t enough and they couldn’t be together.

Maggie didn’t like to dwell on the breakup or the hours of talks they had leading up to it. Instead to pass the time, Maggie would daydream of being found, Alex finding her, or some incarnation of that and how they would laugh, cry and then decide to raise this baby together and live happily ever after.

Maggie also would alternate her daydreams for the moment when she had the baby and the men would come like a thief in the night and take the baby. She knew it had to be someone of great hate to keep her held captive and based on her previous experience Jeremiah was not that callus. But he could be, if prompted. She never discounted anyone. She knew she was dancing with the devil and she had to be smart for her baby.

The clock ticked and she watched. She had asked for a clock and one appeared on her wall a day later.

She counted the days and the time as her belly grew. Maggie was not content to sit and wait, so she paced and exercised.

She did yoga. She took her pills. She ate her breakfast, lunches and suppers. She didn’t dwell on the snacks, but they remained so she ate them too. She had a stash of food in her cell. A small fridge with drinks. Her creature comforts had improved dramatically since she became pregnant. She figured it was for the baby’s health. Her purpose was clear now, an incubator or so she thought.

But Maggie was alone with no one to talk to or share little changes in her body with.

She was alone.

All. The. Time.

She never realized how much she missed the human or alien interaction, until now.

She was lonely with no other real contact, but a tray being pushed through a hole in the wall.

Her visits to the table and lab dwindled to nothing but once a month for a blood draw and measurements.

Maggie figured they had succeeded in their purpose to impregnate her with some sort of alien baby or at least prepare her body for this alien baby with the dozens of injections and tests.

In those days, Maggie’s grit of being indestructible came back and she knew she could handle this or anything they did to her.

In her 32th week, Maggie felt the twinge of pain in her side. She knew it was labor. But she’d be damned if she gave them the satisfaction of knowing before she could determine her plan. She suffered for two days before alerting a guard to her situation.

Doctors rushed in and whisked her to what looked like any other medical facility. She was strapped to another table. She had not missed this feeling. The ghost of those first experiments invaded her mind and she lost some semblance of sanity for a while.

When Maggie came to herself again, she was in full on labor. The pain unbearable, she thought. Why would women put themselves through this? Maggie thought. That was until it became clear she was having a baby. Now.

She followed the doctor’s orders and pushed when told to and a few hours later, a baby was laid on Maggie’s bare chest. She never knew love until that moment.

Never. Ever.

The cries from that little baby melted any resolve she had for pretending this baby wasn’t really hers.

Those blue eyes bore into Maggie’s soul like none other. She was completely in love.

The baby, a girl, had Maggie’s olive skin tone and dark hair, but its eyes were the bluest of blue. Like Maggie was looking into a clear blue ocean but staring at her own reflection. She had 10 fingers, 10 toes and appeared to be a healthy newborn.

Maggie held the baby close to her chest as the doctors swarmed around her. She fed the baby when prompted and for several hours she just cuddled her daughter.

Then, the doctors took the infant, who screamed like none other Maggie had ever heard.

Maggie screamed and jerked against the restraints that had returned to her hands, legs and head. When did that happen, she thought. She needed her baby, but the little girl was taken away.

Maggie heard her daughter’s screams going down the hall.

Then silence.

She cried herself to sleep. She screamed for the baby’s returned.

She prayed. Something she had not done since a fateful Feb. 14 when she was a tiny petrified 14-year-old standing with an oversized duffle bag on the curb in front of her aunt’s house. She continued to pray.

The doctors brought the baby back for feedings. Maggie’s sanity returned during those moments. But then the baby was taken away almost as quickly. And she lost it.

Maggie lost track of time, herself and any semblance of life. She guessed she’d been in her cell for about two years, but she couldn’t be sure of her timeline after her daughter’s birth.

Maggie had gotten accustomed to the pain and was numb to the puncture of her limbs. She really didn’t feel anything but when that little girl was safe and warm in her arms.

Time was measured by when the baby was returned for feedings. Maggie was grateful she could breastfeed the baby.

Then one day, the baby was dropped off in Maggie’s room. A pile of clothing and blankets next to her. The men walked backwards toward the door. It locked behind them. Maggie wasted no time scooping up her daughter. The baby smiled and cooed. Maggie’s dimples reflected back at her in her daughter’s face.

But those blue eyes remained.

Maggie figured the father had such eyes.

She didn’t dwell on the issue too long that day as long as the infant stayed by her side.

The baby at that point was about four months old, Maggie figured.

But as months ticked away, Maggie fell in love with those eyes. Her daughter.

Teething happened and Maggie nearly lost her mind in that concrete cell trying to sooth her daughter who was in so much pain from the new teeth.

She taught her to crawl, eventually walk.

The blue eyes deepened into a resemblance of the sea where Maggie got lost, while the baby’s dimples rivaled her mother’s. They were a way to soften whatever resolve Maggie thought she had as she taught her daughter to speak.

In those days, Maggie never thought of Alex Danvers or her life outside those four walls. She never gave a second thought to any life she could have beyond this one with her daughter’s chubby legs bouncing on her lap and a snaggle tooth smile that was topped with blobs of drool.

The doctors would return, but they never took the baby. They drew blood from both Maggie and her daughter. Took measurements of the baby and sometimes of Maggie.

Food continued to be shoved through a slot in the wall. As were vitamins and other nutrients.

Maggie ate triple the amount she had once when she first arrived in the dungeon, but she didn’t dwell on it. She fed her daughter from her body and slowly on the baby food provided by her captors.

She had her daughter walking, mumbling words and eating solid foods before she knew how much time had passed.

That’s when Maggie’s fight became for her daughter.

She vowed to get the baby out in the world to live freely for both of them. She never thought much about her own survival.

Until she took her daily pills on a Tuesday, and the world got dark.

That day Maggie awoke strapped to a table again. She searched the room for her daughter, but it was filled with only men that she could see. Jeremiah stood to the side, in the left corner of the room. Maggie saw him clearly though her head was strapped to the table.

She panicked.

She screamed knowing what was about to happen next. More experiments.

Fearful in her bones for her daughter, Maggie struggled extraordinarily until a mask was placed over her face and the blue IV bag from days gone by returned. Her world folded into the black.

Maggie didn’t know it was a Tuesday, but she fought thinking she could prevent another time for another soul to be called as a number.

It was a chance, she thought.

As she faded out of consciousness, Maggie could hear the doctors moving about. She could hear laughter from people outside the room that she half recognized from her interactions with guards and staffers.

She vowed to stay awake and remember this. She vowed to stop it, but she wasn’t so strong. Or the drugs were too strong.

Maggie’s body lay lifeless strapped to a cold silver metal table in this building that was her dungeon. It was her fate for another year.

No one above ground gave her life a second thought. Maggie was formally a missing person, but no one really looked for her. They figured given her circumstances that she had disappeared at will.

Maggie didn’t have a big circle of people looking out for her before, but then Alex Danvers ripped what semblance she had of a family from her when they broke up. Or when Alex said they could not be together anymore.

No one came for Maggie Sawyer.

No one came for Maggie Sawyer’s daughter. They didn’t even think to look or consider the baby.

That was so much worse for Maggie on the restless nights when the world closed in on her. What would happen to her daughter? How could she live in this dungeon? Why had Maggie accepted this life?

Maggie was at her true rock bottom and fearful for her daughter’s future.

How could either of them matter to the men who saw them as another experiment?


	4. Chapter 4

It was only weeks, well months after they had parted ways when Alex Danvers got the text from Maggie Sawyer about her missing passport.

Ruby was there and Alex was in no shape to chase after Maggie.

But her heart told her she should.

Though she followed the instructions and mailed the MIA passport to Maggie’s new address.

That night she cried and drank about those feelings.

And drank.

It continued for about a week.

She had to get over her.

She had to keep moving.

Maggie, obviously, was moving on, Alex thought.

Alex couldn’t pretend her heart wasn’t breaking at the thought of Maggie moving on, moving to a new place, likely with a new woman.

It was ruining her.

Sitting on her couch, Alex thought she’d never meet anyone like Maggie.

She knew she’d give up that heartbreak to have Maggie back just for one minute. She’d hope for more time, but in her fantasies, they never had much time.

Their lips would touch for moments and then Alex would wake.

Maggie was always telling Alex she had to go. They only shared a kiss.

Alex was so lonely.

She had recounted her desire for children.

She never told a soul. But she knew she couldn’t go on without Maggie.

Alex tracked Maggie. Then she tracked Maggie’s flight. But Maggie never actually went through customs.

Alerts went off for Alex, but she thought that maybe the detective was paying attention to her accounts being monitored so she went off the grid.

Alex laughed to herself at the thought of Maggie intentionally avoiding Alex through this kind of evasion.

Alex, being the suspicious kind, even compared the passengers to those that Maggie would likely be running with to identify the woman that Maggie had taken to for this journey. But none of the passengers seemed to fit Maggie’s style or any that Alex thought of when she figured Maggie wanted new roots.

Alex was stuck on that passenger list.

She spent days looking at it.

Maggie never actually checked in, but Alex figured Maggie knew her name would cause a red flag, so she would try to fly under the radar. But weeks went by and nothing showed up for Maggie. Not even in National City.

Alex realized Maggie was off the grid.

She had to be.

If she was going to disappear, Maggie wouldn’t want her ex-fiance to be keeping track of her.

So, Alex figured that Maggie had disappeared for that very reason.

Feeling depleted, Alex didn’t know what to do because she was still worried about Maggie. It had been several months since there was any activity on any of the woman’s accounts. Alex knew Maggie was not that well off to just disappear. She had to have help.

But then she thought, maybe the woman was undercover.

Maybe that detective had disappeared for a reason.

Alex thought she was just wasting her time. Her thoughts of looking for the ghost that was Maggie Sawyer was just that of memories for an ex-lover trying to sort out the last of their feelings. It was exactly where some of her friends had said she would be, waiting on Maggie Sawyer, Alex Danvers thought. She had to move on from the dimpled detective. Nothing was suspicious about her disappearance. Alex was just being oversensitive.

Kara had even said that Alex was overreacting to the lack of Maggie Sawyer in National City or beyond. They all agreed it was for the best. But unbeknownst to most of them, Alex had set up trackers so when Maggie Sawyer did surface, Alex would know when and where. She knew it wasn’t pretty and she would likely regret such trackers, but she wanted to know when her ex-fiancé had enough of her hiding.

***

Then Kara or more importantly Supergirl was kidnapped.

So, from then on Alex never gave the disappearance of Maggie Sawyer a second thought.

It took a few days for Kara to return.

She was fine. But how could they all allow for Supergirl to be kidnapped and disappear under the noses?

How could Kara not remember anything from her time?

She was the strongest being on Earth.

She struggled to recount things to Alex. She struggled to talk through the event.

Alex didn’t push her.

Kara just said she couldn’t talk about anything that had happened.

They all assumed Cadmus or some other enemy was behind the incident.

How could they prevent it from happening again?

Kara refused to spend much time talking about the ordeal. Though she would get a far away look and spent many nights flying the city and its outlying areas at 4 a.m., for no reason at all when asked. She just said she felt the need to circle the city. To protect it and the citizens.

It was a month later that Alex was at Kara’s when she cracked open a beer and a smile as she walked over to the living room where Kara sat on the couch with a TV screen behind her waiting for a Netflix decision, that Alex briefly thought of Maggie Sawyer.

Kara’s shirt was half buttoned with a tank underneath, and the white shirt, the moment with Netflix flashing in the background, and the beer in Alex’s hand had her pausing at thoughts of Maggie.

How did they stop loving each other? How did they end up on opposite ends of each other?

Alex stumbled in her walk at the thoughts.

She didn’t understand. She had never stopped loving the detective.

Had Maggie just flipped a switched to not love Alex Danvers when she told them they couldn’t be together?

Alex didn’t understand this silence.

Alex longed for a moment to reconcile her relationship with Maggie, but she had lost that chance months ago. Alex had agonized over those last moments for what seemed like years. Alex could never forgive herself for telling Maggie that day that they couldn’t be together. She knew that to Maggie it meant she wasn’t good enough for Alex. That Maggie wasn’t good enough for anyone who wanted her.

It confirmed Maggie’s every fear.

The fear that was constant from the age of 14 when her family turned her away.

But to Alex, Kara, J’onn and the other Superfriends, Maggie wasn’t that easy to throw away.

They each would have kept her in their family if given opportunity. But Maggie never gave any of them that opportunity.

It haunted Alex.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay

In her early dreams, Maggie Sawyer would see Alex Danvers.

In all her glory.

The redhead would be standing before her promising the world to Maggie. They would kiss, they would make love, they would live happily ever after.

In those early days, it was easy for Maggie to see Alex. She could conjure the woman’s image in her mind quickly.

Alex’s smell would invade Maggie’s nose, her laugh ring in Maggie’s ears, her touch on Maggie’s skin left goosebumps.

It was nearly real.

At least until Maggie would wake up on the cold concrete of her cell.

Every day spent with Alex seemed so real during that time, but so was the hurt and sting of Alex’s rejection.

Those days were before the forced IVs.

They were before the baby.

Before the days that Maggie knew Alex would always be the woman who got away. The woman that would be her best and worst mistake in life.

She would always dream of the woman. She’d wake up to their favorite song playing though Maggie would only hear silence in her life.

Maggie would swear she heard Alex’s voice, breathe or sigh.

Over. And Over. Again. Again.

No matter the time.

Maggie would hear the same. Silence. She figured the drugs that were forced into her veins caused the hallucinations and desires for what she once had. For the life that had rejected her. Maggie could never shake that desire.

That life.

She wished she could have been better.

But she never was that woman.

*****

What Maggie didn’t know was that Nettles was concerned for the best detective he had ever met.

He didn’t understand when she said she had to go.

Nettles also didn’t agree with the woman just up and leaving for this program. It seemed too easy. Too convenient for the moment.

Too casual for Maggie Sawyer to cancel the life she had fought so hard to build.

The woman was on the verge of becoming the newest promotion in the department, the fastest and the best they’d ever seen. He knew given time, the woman would be running the show, her own way.

First a shift, then a squad, and finally a precinct before the entire department.

Maggie Sawyer had that kind of promise, even if she couldn’t see it herself, but Nettles did.

How she abandoned it for a new direction, the man couldn’t understand.

Who was Alex Danvers?

How could one woman push the Detective to such extremes?

Nettles had to know.

So, he stalked this woman.

He did the background checks.

She obviously was a federal agent of the DEO, which never really existed.

Nothing Nettles checked showed that Alex Danvers really existed.

It was too much of a show to explain that Alex Danvers was just a scientist or lab rat for the government.

She didn’t look anything like the Alex Danvers he had met when Maggie Sawyer hung the moon and stars on the eyes of Alex Danvers.

On paper, she was nothing special.

In real life, Maggie Sawyer explained drunkenly how Alex Danvers had made her dream for the first time her in life.

So, Nettles didn’t trust anything about Alex Danvers.

He was ready to behead the woman just for breaking Maggie’s heart.

He couldn’t count the nights the tiny detective passed out on his couch mumbling about the woman. But what was the man to do when Maggie said she was going to learn and be the best?

To not worry about the tiny detective and not to think twice about Danvers.

“I’m so over her,” Maggie shrugged. “Don’t you remember the blonde from the bar last week? She’s the one I’ll be back to find.”

He knew Maggie teased because none of these women ever made it beyond a week with the tiny woman. She talked a big game, but her heart was encased in lead to protect it from anyone but a certain redhead.

So, Nettles encouraged her to pack a bag.

He figured a change of scenery and luck would be exactly what Maggie Sawyer needed.

She was unlike any other friend he’d ever had, or ever would be.

They hugged well wishes after a night of drinking during her farewell, and he went to his early morning armed robbery while Maggie finished her last-minute packing from his couch.

She began on his couch and she’d end the normalcy of life in National City the same way, she had thought that morning.

A white button-down shirt would be the only trace that Maggie Sawyer had been in his apartment.

It was lazily draped over his couch.

It was hers.

He had seen her wear it more than once.

That night Nettles left it.

Two days later as he cleaned up after a disastrous shift, Nettles paused as he picked up the shirt.

He sniffed and could smell Maggie Sawyer’s perfume in the shirt. He threw it to the back of his closet for another day.

It would be the last time the young man would miss his fellow detective.

She never contacted him, so he assumed she had met a hot woman in her travels as she had wished one night when she missed Alex Danvers. He assumed she was flourishing in her travels and studies. That she would never return to National City.

Too much heartbreak and too many ghosts for her to return.

Nettles worked his way into Maggie Sawyer’s old job at National City Police Department. It only took a year.

Often, he wished she was only a phone call away, as she had promised so many times before she left.

The man and Maggie had both been abandoned, for different reasons, but they had each vowed not to do the same to each other. He still carried around Maggie Sawyer’s old number in case she ever called.

She didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter. Being home sick from work means you get an update quickly.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

In the harsh blue light, Maggie was dumped back in her cell.

The light was harsher than it had been, at least in her mind. The blue had changed hues. It was a menacing blue and Maggie wanted nothing to do with it. She covered her eyes and tried to shield her daughter, but the toddler refused to lay under the blanket.

In reality, nothing had changed. It was the same color it always had been. But Maggie was frustrated. Angry.

The scenario was all too familiar because she remembered nothing.

Her daughter had remained there alone the entire time. No concern for the little girl’s well-being, for her safety or comfort by any of the doctors or the men guarding them.

Maggie shuttered thinking what could have happened to her little girl while being left alone. The what-ifs terrified her.

CADMUS didn’t operate that way.

They didn’t care for their lives, for Maggie or her daughter.

When Maggie woke up, she clutched her baby. Then she retched in the toilet in the corner of the room.

It took several weeks before Maggie understood. She comprehended her place in this life. She knew her daughter’s place.

It wasn’t pretty.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not her life.

But yet it was.

She pictured a better life.

Fantasies.

Maggie would often think what if she had made it to the training opportunity. What direction would her life have taken? Would she find someone to really love her?

But a whimper next to her pulled Maggie from her reverie about the what-if’s and to the cold reality of her life now.

Looking at the sleeping form of her little girl, Maggie finally understood why people stopped everything for them. She felt defeated for not being able to give her daughter a real, normal life. Tears gathering in the corner of her eyes as Maggie’s hand gently raked through the little girl’s dark hair, Maggie looked around the cold concrete that held them like lab rats.

Would they ever escape? Would the little girl ever know what it was like to be a normal child? Would Maggie ever be a normal person again?

She shook her head thinking there was nothing normal about either one of them anymore. This was their reality whether in the concrete jail or living freely they would each bear the memories and scars for the rest of their lives.

*******

Maggie had started to call her baby, Avery. It was out of need because the girl had begun to speak.

Small words like “hi,” “bye,” and of course “momma.”

Maggie figured she had to pick a name.

If the girl would be verbal, Maggie would teach her everything she could.

The snaggle-toothed smile the girl would give Maggie melted everything in her.

Maggie was a good mother. She even astonished herself some days when she anticipated what Avery needed. She worried like any other mother about the baby’s health, development and future.

Maggie often faulted herself. She wasn’t built for motherhood. The girl would be better with someone else, but that thought terrified Maggie. She hated to let the girl out of her sight.

Maggie digressed.

But the baby would restore any doubt Maggie had about herself when she would just smile and giggle at her before saying “mama” and clapping with such joy.

They would spend hours with Maggie talking and the girl just giggling.

When Avery would sleep, once in a while Maggie pictured Avery and Alex together. A family.

She went to that fantasy often to escape the cold concrete.

But then Maggie would remind herself that she was never good enough, so Avery likely wouldn’t satisfy Alex’s need.

She vowed to never even try, because if Maggie wasn’t enough before she refused to dangle her daughter out to Alex Danvers like a carrot to a horse running the Kentucky Derby.

It was the hardest lesson Maggie had learned, but the least complicated.

She was a mother. First and foremost, now.

She could be a mother without concern for Alex’s well-being.

The want of Avery made her not good enough for Alex.

It was what Maggie thought she could never offer.

They had been a crossroads those years ago. Alex wasn’t happy where she was and wanted what she thought Maggie could never offer.

Maggie never knew she could trade everything for this.

It was the classic of wanting what you didn’t have and having what you never thought you needed. Maggie tried her best to think she was still never good enough for the one woman she wanted no matter what changed in her life.

If she wasn’t enough as herself, why should she be enough for Alex with her daughter? Especially now that she didn’t know who she was anymore because her entire self-had been changed by this captivity.

No, Maggie decided that she and her daughter would not bow at the knees of Alex Danvers. They were more than that.

They would be happy with each other and where they were, they didn’t need to trade anything for an Alex Danvers. Maggie was moving on and Alex would be lucky to have her and her daughter.

Besides, Maggie figured Alex had moved on. It had been years now. A lot had changed in the free world, Maggie knew.

That free world.

Maggie was gunning for anything that looked like freedom for her daughter and, of course, herself. Most importantly though for Avery.

But then one day brought Jeremiah Danvers.

Into her home. Her cell. Where her daughter lived. They were trapped. In a concrete death cell.

His smile had a different meaning. She was just another experiment.

It physically hurt, or so Maggie thought.

His smile continued.

He asked her questions like how she felt, how her daughter progressed and so on.

Maggie stared, blinked and didn’t answer any of his questions.

Avery just watched silently. The little girl picked up on her mother’s mood and kept still and quiet. Maggie mentally praised her daughter for never really acknowledging the monster before her.

He was quick to praise her for her strength, beauty and stamina for still being sane now. She cursed him in her mind.

His visit caused nightmares and flashbacks for days and Maggie conceded that she would never be normal again.

********

It was too quick Maggie thought even though she knew the signs of these changes.

She kept herself busy and ignored or denied all the signs, telling herself it’s not true.

Yet, Maggie knew.

Here she went again.

Looking into Avery’s little blue eyes, Maggie’s dimples mirrored in her face, the woman sighed, brushed some stray hairs out of the little girl’s face, and decided there had to be a reason for all of this. Eventually.


	7. Addy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a longer chapter with a lot happening. Alex will return soon.

A new two-way mirror was installed during one her visits to the room where blood was drawn and measurements were taken of her body. She noticed immediately when she walked back in to the concrete room and found Avery playing with a large piece of concrete. Careless remnants of the work and Maggie cursed the guards, doctors and anyone else associated with this facility.

How dangerous to leave a toddler with a piece of concrete? The guards didn’t seem to have any paternal instincts and Maggie cursed every last one of them when she was forced to leave her daughter alone.

But lately, she was alone with Avery. They sang and played.

Maggie taught her to count, colors and the alphabet. She had very little tools, but she was not going to make her daughter suffer more than she had to.

Jeremiah returned.

At first, he sat and just stared at her and Avery.

The next time he brought children’s books and some toys.

Avery was delighted. He smiled at her. Maggie wanted to vomit.

The man never said anything to them, but just watched.

The mirror allowed more sound from outside the room to be heard. Maggie heard things now she had never before during her entire captivity.

She heard someone watching them. She heard muffled cries. Once she heard a scream.

But her gut feeling of being watched would return every couple of days. Maggie knew it was Jeremiah that was on the other side of that mirror. She refused to acknowledge him or anyone other than her daughter during those times.

They’d get in the corner of the room that Maggie had designated as a play area, the farthest away from the mirror as possible. She’d block Avery with her body while the girl played. Maggie kept her back to the mirror.

The scrutiny on Maggie meant she was the star of the experimental show again. It had not been a full week since Jeremiah’s last visit when she was hauled back to the doctor’s room. She’d stopped fighting. They’d stopped restraining her as much.

There was a mutual understanding that had developed.

It shattered again that day for Maggie when her suspicions were confirmed.

Maggie Sawyer was pregnant for the second time in her life.

That day included countless experiments. Those also involved white straps on the shiny metal table.

She was given another sonogram of this baby. The black and white photo proved she had to mentally prepare to protect this new life.

Her life would change again.

So, what they didn’t get right with Avery, they were trying to correct with this child, Maggie thought inquisitively.

This time Maggie didn’t pray. She knew better. She had done so before and nothing had changed about her circumstances. She had prayed for Avery. For their safety. Nothing had transformed for them.

Her hope was not lost, but she was not as naïve as she had been the first time.

She was an experiment.

Avery was an experiment.

Her unborn baby was an experiment.

They were all designed for a purpose, for someone else’s enterprise no matter what they did individually and Maggie could never forget that.

The baby showed no signs of delays or issues from whatever the doctors did during her first weeks of life. 

Maggie also knew she was just a vessel for this life. She was taking what she had and doing the best she could.

But was it enough?

Maggie wanted everything she didn’t have, yet her life was full from what she did have and she was so thankful for those babies. She fell into a lull that she was safe. The vitamins came and more than enough food for her and Avery.

More creature comforts filled the room. Building blocks and engaging items for Avery. More books for Maggie. A journal and other personal items she was never afforded before.

Maggie caressed her belly often. It soothed her. The motion also soothed her unborn daughter.

Avery sought her mother’s comforting touch and snuggles at a little more than year old now.

Maggie explained her pregnancy as best she could to the toddler. They talked to the baby and Avery would delight at getting to rub and talk to Maggie’s growing belly.

The girl was mobile and it kept Maggie up and moving as well. Maggie taught Avery yoga. Making it fun and game-like she hoped she could prepare them for their future with these little things.

To offer security, Maggie found herself singing to both her babies. Songs she never thought she’d known, but they came to her like walking. She guessed they were from her mother and her childhood. Maybe her grandmother, who was like a mother at one time.

Maggie determined her daughter was about 18 months old when she went into labor for the second time in her life. She held off for a mere two hours before realizing the baby was on its way and not waiting for anyone, let alone Maggie who wanted the upper hand in the situation. The doctors returned. They took her daughter, Baby A, out the room in preparation for Baby B.

Maggie grunted at the cold callus way they discussed her children. She was so angry, but her life’s will wasn’t the same it had been years previously. She chuckled to herself that she never imagined having children, let alone being so protective.

In years past, Maggie would’ve broken the necks of as many captors as she could’ve reached. Now, she was content to keep herself and her children alive. Pacify as many as she could until the time was right.

She knew the right time would come. Her faith in that hope was all she had left to keep from going insane.  
Keeping her babies safe was the No. 1 priority, above her own comfort and life.

With this birth Maggie was taken to a room specifically designed for this, she suspected by the way it was laid out and decorated. In between labor pains, Maggie thought how many others like her and her daughter were there in this facility.

Then sharp pains brought her back to the reality, she was giving birth again. Although she knew what to expect this time, she thought she was tougher because the pain was not as bad as with Avery.

The pregnancy seemed shorter and the delivery was quick. 

*******

Now that she was a mother of two, Maggie understood the yearning Alex had for these little lives. They were miracles. The loves of her life.

Every day with Avery had been a learning experience and Maggie couldn’t imagine how her thoughts and life would change with this newest addition. She was overjoyed, but she kept that emotion to herself. She loved her little girl more than anything in this world and she would do the same for the new baby.

Maggie struggled against the restraints. She craned her neck to get a glimpse of her daughter sitting on a bed on the other side of the room, tethered just like her mother, but those ropes were longer giving the toddler the freedom to play with a toy in front of her.

Whispering in her ears when she wanted to just disappear, Maggie heard the cries of her second daughter. It guided her to the next day and motivated her to keep a diligent watch.

This baby had the same blue eyes as her big sister. Those piercing blue eyes haunted Maggie.

Ten toes, ten fingers and otherwise perfect.

Lighter skin and near golden sunset blonde hair so thick and bushy that Maggie combed it over the baby’s head. The infant had the same dimples as her mother, but other than that trademark, Maggie hardly recognized her as being from her own body.

Gone was the olive skin and dark thick mane of hair that was Maggie’s trademark and now Avery’s.

Chubby little legs kicked as the doctors took measurements and blood samples. 

Soon the infant was laid in Maggie’s arms and Avery’s bed was wheeled over to her. Both their restraints were removed.

Maggie cried.

She caressed her newborn’s face, the girl cooed and showed off a tiny dimple.

Maggie cried again.

Maggie knew the dimples were a strong trait from her own mother, from her grandfather and from his mother who lived a strong and vibrant life based on her grandfather’s stories when she was a child. She was happy those persisted. She smiled, her dimples in full effect, at her babies.

Other than those obvious traits, the babies were nothing alike. 

Avery was loud, boisterous and demanding when it came to feedings, while Baby B was quiet, shy and inconspicuous. She cried, but not even enough to register on Maggie’s radar compared to Avery. 

Baby B remained with her mother and big sister, but for monthly checks with the entire family.

Again, Maggie wanted to ask her mother about her infancy stages, but yet she was left alone with these two children. There were so many questions. Was she doing this right? Would that harm the baby? Maggie had the books and her babies.

Alone in a room where no one else existed.

Time passed and life continued.

The girls grew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read and follow along.


	8. The Rescue!

Maggie had taken to journaling about the girls. It was her only way to record her babies and she prayed she would be allowed to keep them when they escaped. Guards or someone else provided the notebooks and pens, while Maggie wrote all the details about her daughters. First words, crawling, and eventually first steps were written. Maggie developed her own calendar system to keep track.

Maggie marked her first daughter, Avery’s, second birthday, or as least as close as she could count based on how she counted days. Her second daughter that she decided to name Addison was nearing nine months old. Avery actually named the girl because she kept saying Addy and pointing to the baby while Maggie breast fed her.

One day Maggie sat rocking her youngest while Avery slept during an afternoon nap. The entire family was about to nap when the lights flashed before going dark. Then loud noises permeated their concrete sanctuary.  
Gone were the blue lights when the emergency lights came on and a siren blared loudly in their room.

The girls screamed at the top of their lungs.

Maggie’s body felt as if it were about to rupture and fear filled her thoughts. 

Tears spilled from their eyes and Maggie’s heart pounded in her ears as she decided she had to secure them. Protect them. Save them.

They had never heard such a commotion and Avery stood in the room, little hands covering her ears, tears streaming down her face. Addison was tucked into Maggie’s chest, but also screamed to match her sister.

Maggie took both her girls and hid in a cupboard that had been installed not long after Baby A’s birth. Maggie pushed her extra blankets, clothing and some toys to the floor. She vowed to protect her family as well as she could.

Detective Maggie Sawyer was long gone, but her ferocious love for the children she cherished never dwindled. She was a protector at heart.

She would protect her babies until the last breath left her body. The children had no idea of the threat, but Maggie’s heart pounded out of her chest at the thought of them being ripped from her arms.

She hunkered down in that cabinet with her babies for what seemed like a week, but in reality, it was only an hour until men with guns stormed into the room silently. The loud booms and building shaking bombs had stopped. 

Maggie had actually let her guard down and thought the attack was over. She was foolishly thinking she was safe. They were safe.

But what was safe during the last few years in Maggie Sawyer’s world?

One man slowly opened the cabinet door with an AR-15 pointed at Maggie. The immediate threat made Maggie go wild-eyed and protective, with her babies pushed far behind her further in the cabinet.

Maggie’s slim body had shielded her children.

So, she jumped and pushed the gun to the side. The man easily snatched Maggie up and held her as she struggled.

Avery crawled out screaming “mommy, mommy, mommy” and all the fight in Maggie subsided. The men stilled and looked at each other. Addison soon crawled into their sight behind her sister.

Maggie screamed to be released and the man stunned dropped her. She clutched her children into her body and shield them from the men.

One man, older and smaller than the rest, put his gun on his back, dropped his helmet and walked forward with both hands out, palms up.

“Ma’am, your safe. We will not hurt you or your children. We are here to save you,” he said.

Maggie could not focus. Her body shook with fear unlike any she had ever known. Avery peered from her mother’s shoulder and stopped crying. 

“Ma’am, I promise we will not hurt you or your children. We came to rescue you,” the man said again. He was down on one knee, eye level with Avery. “Ma’am, we have to get you and your children out of this building now. Will you come with us, please?”

The noise in the building seemed to stop and Maggie heard him clearly. She looked up from her girls and saw his face. He was smiling and had extended his hand.

“I know you’ve been held captive here and we will get you to a safe place,” the man said. “We will not hurt you. You are safe.”

“Kurt, we have to move out!” another man at the door yelled. “Get that woman and those kids out of this room now.”

The man looked at Maggie before he said, “We have to go now. Please let me help you.”

Maggie shook her head and slowly scooped up Addison in her arm as she stood. Avery tried to crawl up her mother’s body, but could not reach. The man bent down and helped her into Maggie’s free arm.

Holding both girls in her arms, Maggie nodded and walked toward the door. The man was right behind her and the other men, still armed with guns walked ahead and behind them. A protective circle around Maggie and her girls as they shuffled out of the area.

Maggie clutched her children to her like a momma bear and they were ushered down a long corridor. Turning several times and going through several broken secure doors, Maggie only recognized one room as they made their way out of the building. She saw one of the doctors, on his knees men with guns surrounded him.

Some of her previous guards lay face down in one hallway. The guards had their hands zip tied behind their backs and some appeared to be unconscious.

It took about five minutes before the group stepped outside. 

It was the first glimpse of the sky Maggie had seen in at least three, maybe four years, she guessed.

She never paused to admire that glowing evening sky because her girls had started crying again. Uncontrollably. 

The commotion and chaos they passed while walking out sent the girls into a frenzy. Avery cried and Addison screamed.

Their little hands were joined on their mother’s chest as she held each one on each hip.

The trio got into the back seat of a Sport Utility Vehicle and the man, who spoke to her in the cell, was riding in the front. He told another man to drive. They sped away.

She didn’t even pay attention to their route or surroundings as the landscape flew by outside the vehicle.

It was something Detective Maggie Sawyer would have died trying to memorize.

This Maggie Sawyer was a mother and only cared for her children, their safety and comfort. She had dreamed of this day so often, she didn’t know if reality mixed with her dreams or vice versa.

Maggie had two crying babies, so she focused on trying to soothe their confusion, fear and momentarily nervousness of a car ride.

The girls had never been in a vehicle, much less moved by armed men in such turmoil.

Maggie knew they didn’t understand, nor did she.

Where were they headed? Who had her now? What would they do with her and her children when they arrived? Was she trading one hell for another?

She feared that unknown more than any other she’d encountered in recent years.

What would happen next to Maggie Sawyer and her little family?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your continued support!


	9. Ice Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next installment. Thank you for reading.

The trio of Maggie and her daughters, along with the two men in front wearing black tactical gear arrived at an underground parking garage within 40 minutes of the evacuation.

Maggie never noticed any of it because Avery wailed the entire drive while Addison had calmed down and kept her big blue eyes open and looking around at their surroundings and the SUV. The girls took after their mother more than anyone knew, including Maggie. They cataloged everything and every movement.

The children also just needed the touch of their mother to soothe them. But a funny way of knowing this, Maggie had never really been separated from her children other than her visits to the physician’s room for tests and injections. After Addison’s birth, both girls accompanied their mother for those tests.

That forced a whole other side of Maggie to appear. One who showed no pain or fear in front of her girls, who always curiously watched the men in white coats checking their mother.

The vehicle stopped and the men got out. The man who convinced Maggie to leave the room opened the passenger door.

“Ma’am, we are here. They will help you and your children here. They need to check you out and then can feed you and get you anything you need,” the man said softly while holding the door open. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Maggie said while nodding and hoisting Addison up to her chest and pushing Avery closer to the door.

They got out and Avery stood next to her mother. The tiny woman’s legs enough to protect her from the eyes of the group of people who met them at the entrance door of this facility.

Like their mother, the girls were too curious and both peered up to see what was about to happen. Avery stood, defiantly like she knew that this world was harsh, mean and she was ready for the pushback from everything, just like her mother.

Maggie saw none of this.

She stood terrified that she and her daughters were found. 

Rescued.

What did that even mean now? What was next?

A tall platinum blonde woman wearing hospital scrubs walked forward to them. Addison turned her head into her mother’s chest, while Avery jumped behind Maggie’s legs with both little arms wrapped around those legs.

“Ma’am, if you will come with me, we’d like to check you out. Do you understand? Do you speak English? Hablo Espanol?” the woman said to Maggie as she got closer and closer. Addison’s head popped up and stared right at the woman. Maggie put her hand on the girl’s head and guided it back to her chest.

“Yes, I understand,” Maggie said quietly. 

Meanwhile, two other SUVs rolled up behind them and another woman with a child exited one vehicle while a pregnant woman rolled out of the other because she appeared ready to give birth any moment.

Maggie’s heart thumped in her throat and her focus was on her girls, so she never saw or heard any of that   
commotion behind her. So unlike Maggie Sawyer.

The trio slowly started to walk toward the sliding doors, as a man passed by them pushing a wheelchair. 

Stepping through the threshold of the building, the bright lights inside the building blinded Maggie and her children for a moment. Avery stared up at the ceiling. She had never seen halogen lights. Addison burrowed further into her mother’s chest. Maggie rubbed circles on her back while Avery clung to Maggie’s left leg.

The trio walked down a long concrete hallway and fear flashed in Maggie’s mind that she had just walked into another hell. Her rusty detective instincts surfaced and she began to look around her as they walked. Avery’s clinging to her leg made the journey go slower. The toddler, nearly a 3-year-old, clutched particularly tight when they got to the end of the hall and a large sliver door swooshed open before them.

Maggie stooped and picked up her daughter. Carrying both girls now Maggie looked at the woman and shook her head as they continued.

The woman smiled and said, “Ma’am, I promise we will not hurt you or your girls. We are here to help you and free you.”

The woman stopped at a door on the right and held up a key card to open the door. Opening immediately, Maggie saw a room full of medical equipment and doctors and nurses.

She froze.

Another experiment.

“No, I can’t. Please. Don’t,” Maggie said clutching her children tighter and starting to back out of the room.

The girls began to cry, as if on cue sensing the fear in their mother.

The woman who had been escorting them, put a comforting hand on Maggie’s back.

“We aren’t going to do anything without your consent. We want to make sure you are OK,” she smiled as she caught Addison’s eyes looking up.

Avery looked at the woman. “You no hurt my mommy or sissy,” the toddler said brazenly with tears in her eyes. 

“I promise we will not hurt any of you,” the woman said her voice an octave higher. “After we are done checking you in and making sure you are OK, you can have ice cream or anything you want, how does that sound?”

“Mommy, what’s ise kreeam?” Avery said looking at her mother, her nose snotty and tear stains on her cheeks.

“You will love it baby,” Maggie said and snorted.

This was her life. 

Her little girl didn’t know what ice cream was, along with dozens of other creature comforts.

Taking a deep breath, Maggie followed the woman to a bed deeper in the room and deposited Avery and then Addison, who immediately stood back up on wobbly legs and climbed Maggie like a koala.

Picking up Addison, Maggie looked at another woman, older with jet black hair and glasses, who stood opposite them buffered by the bed. 

“What do you want from us?” Maggie said.

“Let’s start with the basics, what’s your name and these darlings?” the woman said smiling as she readied a tablet in her hand to input the data.

“Maggie Sawyer.”

The woman inhaled and paused her fingers over the screen. She looked up at Maggie in the eye and then quickly back down and started typing. 

Everyone knew the story of Maggie Sawyer. Decorated NCPD detective who vanished four, no now it was nearly five years ago without a trace. A small group lobbied and searched for the woman, but nothing every surfaced of her. Pleas were made to the media nationwide, but nothing ever came of those requests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter!

Across town and sitting in the locker room at headquarters after he had lost all contents of his stomach, Nettles held his head in his hands, his tie and suit jacket discarded on the floor. Staring at the 1970s era green tile floor, Nettles shook his head knowing he will feel guilty until his dying breath for not giving Maggie Sawyer more of a thought. For not searching more for her in those early days. For not trusting his instinct about her. For not believing she would just disappear. For everything now.

After seeing that prison, seeing those drugs in the nearby rooms, Maggie’s haunted eyes, those children, Nettles understands she was never better off like he daydreamed the first few times he missed her.

She didn’t get the better life she had dreamed of and told him she was going for all that time ago.

He was paired with a DEO team that swept in that building behind the initial entry group. He saw Maggie being escorted out of the building. It was the first time in years he’d laid eyes upon the woman and she never even noticed him, so unlike the Maggie Sawyer he knew. 

In fact, the amount of alcohol Nettles had at his local liquor store on the corner would never drown the suspicions he had now of what had become of Maggie Sawyer. And Nettles fancied himself an alcohol connoisseur who could hold his liquors. Just like Maggie.

Looking up at the ceiling and calming his nerves to go see about the woman, Nettles replayed seeing the two children who were identical replicates of the woman herself. She could never deny those children weren’t hers. He knew that for a fact. He also grieved that fact. He knew Maggie. He knew what that had cost her.

Anger filled his chest as Nettles thought about the many moonlit talks he had with Maggie on his old fire escape about children and not wanting them. How she thought she wasn’t built for being a mother or a parent. Too many things could go wrong and Maggie insisted she wasn’t prepared for that kind of responsibility. The let-down. The disappointment in their little faces.

Nowadays, Nettles was the lieutenant of the NCPD Science Division, right where Maggie Sawyer should have been years ago. She should have been his boss, he thought. Likely the assistant chief by now, ready to be department chief soon. Eventually police commissioner.

Standing and picking up his tie, Nettles redressed with his suit jacket and made his way out of the station. The tie would wait for another day. He had an old friend to see about.

In the meantime, Maggie and her daughters had their blood drawn, basic medical evaluations and she answered some questions and learned their rescue was coordinated with several agencies including NCPD and the DEO. She was shocked to learn she never left National City.

All these years she was likely less than a few miles from some shitty apartment she had once lived during her travels around the city following breakups or rent increases.

That revelation struck her particularly swift. Maggie tucked it away to ruminated on another day when she could actually process all this information.

Now, Maggie had babies to focus on. She would always have babies to focus on nowadays. 

Doctors informed her the children appeared to be well advanced for their alleged ages. They questioned Maggie’s timelines, but she sadly admitted she could be mistaken because of the lack of time seeming to pass in the concrete dungeon. 

Maggie didn’t ask many questions. She felt like she had no right.

Grateful, that no one asked her if she had someone she wanted to be contacted.

The trio were ushered into what appeared to be a regular room with a bed, table, chairs and living quarters. It looked vaguely familiar, Maggie thought. 

Unbeknownst to her, she was in the former living quarters of J’onn Jones, former director of the DEO. Some things around the DEO had not changed even though Reign destroyed one tower of the facility.

But too soon, a cart was wheeled into the room that had a mountain of food containers on it. All other thoughts disappeared, as her children rushed the cart at the smell of the delicious foods that they had never tried.

Maggie got the delight of experiencing many things that evening and seeing her children taste foods they’d been denied was the highlight.

Avery got her first taste of ice cream – chocolate swirl with vanilla. The little girl declared it “the bestest.” Addison remained quiet and concerned just watching everything and following her mother’s instructions when she was fed.

A woman in her 50s came into the room and asked to talk with Maggie while the girls ate at the table.

Maggie had just finished polishing off a sub sandwich, chips, and chocolate cake leftover by Addison – who preferred strawberry shortcake.

Another woman came in behind the older woman with a bag of toys and dumped them in the corner. The girls immediately busied themselves with figuring out the toys and playing.

The older woman, Maggie surmised, was a social worker of some type. She asked a lot of questions about Maggie’s captivity, the birth of each of her girls and how Maggie was feeling now knowing they were free.

“But am I though?” Maggie asked back, head tilted and eyebrow raised. “Can I just take my girls and walk out of here, freely?”

The woman sighed and said “Yes, actually you can. I would advise against it because you are inadequately prepared for transitioning back into society and your girls will be in for a shock to their systems. I’d suggest controlled introductions and socialization. Not to mention, do you have anywhere to go? I mean you didn’t ask for anyone to be contacted.”

“So basically, we are like criminals who have to be reintroduced into the world,” Maggie said dryly. “I never had many friends and, well, my family wouldn’t care one way or the other.”  
Her hand tapped on the table.

“I want to go outside when it’s daylight. I want to take my girls outside. We will stay here for a while, but I want to see the sky,” Maggie said as the woman stood to leave.

“OK. That can be arranged in the morning,” the woman said. “But I’m here to help and I can if you allow it. I suggest you allow us to help you as much as we can.”

It had been a very long evening and after the woman left, Maggie learned they were free to lounge in their room without interruptions until the next morning. It was already 2 a.m., but Maggie and her girls really had no concept of time.

Maggie used the en-suite bathroom and got the girls ready for bed.

They all crashed soon after getting into bed. Avery to her right and Addison to her left, Maggie listened to their breathing even out and soon was asleep as well.

*****

That night Nettles arrived at the DEO and was told he wouldn’t be seeing Maggie Sawyer yet.

After making a fuss, Nettles received a tablet and watched Maggie and her girls from the DEO’s security cameras. Tears gathered in the corner of his eyes. She looked the same, a bit older, and she carried herself differently.  
He placed the tablet on a nearby computer console and left.

It was time for some bourbon, whiskey and even tequila, Maggie’s favorite. The alcohol didn’t matter as long as it gave him some relief for a moment of what had occurred.

The night passed in peace for Maggie and her girls. But by 6:14 a.m., Maggie felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Her body ached, however, it was not from the lack of sleep. She ached from the constant feed the CADMUS funded Project TAD had sent to her body.

No one understood that yet.

She did not know this was the reason for the ache. She thought it was the terror from the raid. The kidnapping from the only place her girls had known as home and now the unknown of what happens next.

The constant new threat of a new world for Maggie and her girls. Maggie thought she was just stressing to the max and going crazy. Her mind couldn’t focus. And soon the girls woke and sensed her frenzy. 

They cried more and more and it was worse than when Avery was teething. At that time, the little girl screamed and screamed until a guard took pity and slipped in some teething cream for babies. Maggie knew the man’s hands, but not his face and she repeatedly thanked him whenever he would hand other items through the metal slot of their concrete dungeon.

But now, free from the concrete, this feeling shook the girls and Maggie, who felt like she was crawling out of her own skin.

Her babies were going through the same withdrawal, but she didn’t know that yet. The trio suffered a withdrawal of a mammoth amount that they had no idea about.

They cried uncontrollably, loudly. She thought they were just scared of the new men, of the new environment, of the unknown and feeding from Maggie’s fears. She tried, unsuccessfully to control herself and emotions.

The former Maggie Sawyer could do such a thing quickly. That detective could school her face to show no emotion in the blink of an eye. But the mother in her prevented her from doing anything she once could and she was so frustrated.

Maggie held Addison close to her chest in their new home to be. Avery was standing wobbling next to them and screamed the same amount as her sister, if not louder. Her little feet never left the ground, but she clawed, stretched and demanded her mother’s attention just the same.

The babies cried and Maggie was on the verge of tears, but she quelled them down because she knew nothing of their new captors and Detective Sawyer refused to show her entire weakness in one moment.

Doctors were called in and again examined them. More blood was taken from each of them. More tests and MRIs were conducted. They all came back as perfect.

So, in a desperate attempt to appease everyone, Maggie got her wish and the trio were escorted to an enclosed garden. The girls saw grass for the first time, a tree and a bench. The sun also fascinated them.

The outing gave them a moment of peace. Maggie stood with her face up to the sky and felt her life was being recharged. She daydreamed of afternoons spent in the park near her old apartment. It was an amazing park for that part of town. The girls would be playing on the swings and a slide or just running around being normal children, Maggie daydreamed.

Teams had already gathered all the drugs in the concrete dungeon, so doctors began to pour over their mixtures. Thinking a clue was in the mixtures.

Maggie and her girls suffered all the classic signs of drug withdrawal. It was another torture leftover from Jeremiah Danvers.

In nearby rooms three other women and their children also suffered the similar symptoms, but not the same. Doctors had quarantined them all out of fear of some alien issue. Alien DNA and blood were found at the site and with the drugs used on the women and children.

Anything was possible at this point, the top scientist and doctors discussed.

Overseeing all of this was the DEO’s newest director Alex Danvers. 

She had been informed that Maggie Sawyer had been rescued with the other three women. She also saw the video surveillance of Maggie and the two little girls with her.

A sob escaped from Alex’s chest when she saw that video. She knew Maggie had been forced to have those two little girls. She also knew from the hours they spent talking that Maggie never wanted to be placed in that role.

Yet, here she stood. Caressing her toddlers and singing to them while Alex watched from afar.

Alex decided she couldn’t be personally involved in this mission and resolution of these women. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to look Maggie Sawyer in the eye knowing she had given up on the woman all those years ago when she disappeared.

Alex had just moved on. She thought Maggie had also moved on.

Alex was gutted to learn Maggie had suffered a fate that was worse than death, or so she suspected for the tiny woman.

Alex kept her distance and never ventured to that wing of the facility. She decided and ordered that she would track medical records, tests and the movements of Maggie and her children, but not interact with them at all. 

Maggie’s journals turned up in their room 22 hours after their rescue. The DEO and NCPD were going through the concrete building inch by inch. The found hundreds of hard drives filled with formulas and videos from Maggie’s very first day inside the facility until her rescue.

When Alex received word that Maggie had dozens of journals about her captivity, she wanted to pour over each one. But the reality was that she couldn’t punch her in the gut that way. She was not privy to such intimate information anymore.

So, Alex decided that she couldn’t invade Maggie’s privacy that way. She ordered them to be returned to their owner, unopened by anyone.

In another section of the DEO the doctors paid to tend to Maggie, her girls, and the others were jailed and interrogated for hours. But they were clueless about most of their procedures and the results.

The mastermind of the entire project was nowhere to be found. Those scientists didn’t even know his name other than TAD was stamped on everything and they were paid handsomely for their work.

Project TAD had been a success and Jeremiah Danvers had allowed his little project to be found. He had gleaned the information he needed from Maggie and her daughters. The others were just bonus test subjects, but they never underwent what Maggie Sawyer was subjected to, and their children would never compare to Maggie’s.

No one knew that yet though.

As for the withdrawals, they continued.

That was thanks to Jeremiah Danvers as well because he had concocted a cocktail – an amount of painkiller and some other chemicals – that was pumped into the air of the concrete dungeon’s holding rooms to keep the test subjects, specifically Maggie Sawyer and her daughters, calm, agreeable and safe from hurting anyone dealing with them.

No one knew.

Not even the scientists paid to tend to Maggie and her children.

It was a little secret kept by the engineer, who was the ultimate orchestrator that held Maggie captive and impregnated her against her will and tested the limits of her life. The blue lights also held Maggie’s life and those of her children in balance.

She would learn that lesson 84 hours after her rescue.

But in those first few hours, Maggie shrugged when people asked what she needed. She held her babies close and searched their tiny faces for clues. She didn’t know what was happening to them.

They suffered.

She knew it wasn’t pretty, but she knew that she and her babies needed to be stronger than they were in these days. They were about to be free. No amount of pressure could keep them from being free people but because the DEO or some other entity would always track her for being kidnapped, trapped and impregnated, they would never be truly free. Maggie understood this, but she didn’t recognize it at these moments.

Nearing the end of her third day as a “free” woman, Maggie recognized she was starting to feel a bit more normal. The headaches, tremors and flu-like symptoms had begun to subside. The visits to the garden helped and Maggie’s claustrophobia had eased. Her girls also played more with the growing number of toys staffers brought to them.

Maggie didn’t know that Alex and Kara Danvers had ordered all the toys they could imagine for the girls. Both had watched the closed-circuit television of Maggie and her girls. Neither Danvers woman had discussed what this meant nor had they visited them.

Alex ordered Kara to not interact with them, to which she disagreed.

So, in defiance of her big sister, Supergirl dropped from the sky one morning while Maggie and her girls played in the garden courtyard. The girls were immediately frightened of a flying woman and shrieked.

It was the first such response Supergirl and it startled her. She backed up, not knowing initially what to do.  
The girls cried and clung to their mother.

Maggie smiled apologetically to Supergirl and tried to soothe them, but they wanted nothing to do with the flying woman. 

Maggie thanked Supergirl for trying to help but she ushered her children back inside.

After they calmed down she told them the story of Supergirl and how she helped people. How they once were friends. Kara heard it all and smiled that Maggie didn’t seem to hold a grudge against her. Supergirl vowed to try again soon with the girls.

Alex Danvers was a different story.

She reamed Supergirl out for disobeying strict orders not to go to Maggie or her daughters.

“I told you not to go see them!” Alex yelled from her office. “What part of that did you not understand? Do you not speak English anymore? How could you do this?”

“What was the harm? Alex, I don’t understand why I couldn’t try to help. Maggie didn’t seem upset and her daughters are just children. Children love me. Well, most children. OK, Not Maggie’s children, but most,” Kara said sighing in defeat and the Kryptonian flopped down into a nearby chair – it creaked from her strength and weight.

“I’m sorry. I won’t go near them again,” Kara said shaking her head in defeat.

“No. That’s not what I mean. I just. I’m. God, Kara what am I doing? What am I supposed to do?” Alex said sighed and collapsed next to her sister on the chair that was a loveseat in Director Danvers’ office. “I thought she had found a new life, a better life with someone else. Yet, here she was. Being tortured, impregnated. I mean, how do I come back from that? Do I try to be her friend? Does she even want to see me? Does she blame me for not finding her? I didn’t even know she was really missing. I mean I suspected after a year, but then Reign and everything else happened. I’m a terrible person. I never searched much for her. I just always thought she didn’t want me after how I’d pushed her away.”

“Oh Alex, no you aren’t, you didn’t know,” Kara said and held the elder Danvers in her arms as she cried. The emotional dam had finally broken for Alex and Kara picked up the pieces.

The sisters spent the next several hours talking about how things ended all that time ago with Maggie and Alex, how Alex had changed and now how they suspected Maggie had changed. 

They agreed Supergirl would try again with the girls after some Supergirl toys were delivered.

It would be a start. It was all they had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read this story and for your constructive feedback!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So with Hurricane Florence threatening to kill all of us in a couple days, I'm posting the last chapter I have prewritten. I'd hoped to give it one more go over before I posted again. But going into this thing, starting tomorrow, days at home will be few and far between for likely weeks.
> 
> Yes, I'm on the East Coast at a beach near some of you. :-)
> 
> Be safe out there my friends. If you are in the path, leave NOW. The rest of us will try to take care of those who don't.
> 
> Please say a prayer to whoever you pray to that it won't be as bad as predicted. 
> 
> As for me and mine, we are as ready as we ever will be.

Unknowingly, Maggie and her girls could have been saved such anguish of the withdrawals, but being the stubborn one, she was, Maggie refused to believe the man who offered a solution. She thought he was only trying to prolong their stay and suffering. Maybe he was even a CADMUS plant.

Trust no one, Maggie thought.

The DEO worker bee had seen their suffering, calculated their addiction and figured out a quicker way to get them through the rehab process. His failure was he didn’t go through any authorized person and approached Maggie when she was alone with her children. She balked at him, ordered him out of their room and begged anyone who listened to prevent his reentry ever.

She trusted no one, but her own self and her babies.

On a Friday night, Maggie knew she was out of the woods of whatever drugs they had been subjected to, but her attention quickly turned to something else. It had been 84 hours since their rescue and Maggie was acutely aware of everything now.

All the sounds.

All the movements.

All the whispers at her door.

In the hallway.

In the hallway of her hallway.

In every DEO hallway.

At the control center.

In the office of all those people, she’d given up on so many years ago, because no one found her sooner.

As a matter of fact, even down the street from them at the city base. Then soon, throughout the city.  
Maggie heard it all.

She was delirious she thought.

Maggie’s senses were on overload and she was jumpy, on the edge.

It was too much to take. 

She heard every whisper. Every conversation. Whether she meant to or not, she heard them.

She told herself she could handle it. This was just another side effect of the drugs; of her withdrawals. She was hallucinating. She had to be. There’s no other answer. But she would survive, she vowed internally.

She didn’t have super hearing. She was hallucinating.

She could deal with this once she got accustomed to it. She was just outside herself and it would stop once she slowed her senses down and realized she wasn’t going to die at this very moment. Or so she told herself.

She closed her eyes and shrunk down into herself. The world got quiet. She heard the giggles of her daughters as they played with a simple Jack-in-the-box. 

Avery wound the toy until it would pop up to Addison’s delight. Avery had taken to making Addison laugh at every turn. A sweet sisterly love. Addison’s laugh was so pure that Maggie loved it. She encouraged Avery often to make her sister laugh. In turn, Maggie would make Avery laugh. Those were her favorite times in their young lives.

But when she thought she was through it, she heard the crowd again. It had only been a few minutes reprieve. She was overwhelmed. The sounds of a few DEO agents milling around nearby. The discussions from next door, then streets over and streets away.

Then, Maggie heard the voice of someone she hadn’t in so many years.

Alex Danvers.

Maggie knew she was delirious. She had to be right now.

Alex was on the phone. Apologizing. Then Alex was talking about dinner plans.

Maggie paled, but she heard. Every. Word. Clearly.

Alex’s frustrated voice rung in her ears. Alex was apologizing for missing something, but Maggie couldn’t focus to hear the exact words to understand their meaning. She heard the sounds. She had to be delirious. It had to be from the drug withdrawal. From the captivity.

The room started to spin and Maggie crashed to the floor. Lifeless.

Medics rushed into the room to tend to Maggie and the blonde nurse who had bonded with the girls took them to the bed to distract them from the commotion. Avery fought the woman and won while the woman was distracted with Addison. The little girl sprinted to her mother’s side as fast as her chubby little three-year-old legs would carry her.

The workers allowed the little girl to hold her mother’s hand. 

“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy wakey up! Mommy,” Avery said her voice shouting before it tapered off. “Mommy.”

In a few minutes, Maggie bolted upright and sucked in air like she had been drowning. Her skin tingled and her body felt flush. She looked around at all the concerned faces and then at Avery’s curious eyes about to spill tears.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I got dizzy that’s all. Please leave us. I’m good,” Maggie said pulling her daughter close to her. “Shhh, baby it’s ok. Mommy is here. Mommy is fine and you are fine.”

Holding onto Avery tightly, Maggie kept whispering into her hair how she was fine and so was Avery.

The medical staff unhooked some monitoring equipment and pulled wires off Maggie and retreated out the door. The nurse stayed behind and asked quietly if in a few minutes Maggie would submit to some quick tests, nothing drastic and no leaving the girls.

Maggie just shook her head as she held her babies.

*********

Alex Danvers was walking out of the DEO after four days of directing every moment of the latest mission. She wasn’t out in the field anymore, but calling the shots from the control room felt just as stressful.

It was likely one of her most important missions as the DEO Director because they had found Maggie Sawyer.

Maggie. Sawyer.

Alex Danvers had said that name over and over to herself multiple times in the recent hours as if to get herself adjusted to the name and the woman. But she wasn’t comfortable with any of it.

As for finding Maggie Sawyer, it all was a fluke. Just as Maggie had been in Alex’s life, Alex thought to herself.

Alex didn’t believe in coincidences, but this was too much of a stretch to believe it wasn’t. 

*****

The tip had been inconsequential but Vasquez decided it deserved some attention, so she assigned two rookies to do some recon of the former pediatrician’s office in a desolate part of town. Once the nearby factory had closed so did a lot of the surrounding support for those workers, including this office.

It was a small, nondescript white concrete block building. Too small, in fact.

But once inside the elevators descended to a basement. A large elaborate building was underground. Inside there was a labyrinth of torture chambers, holding cells, operating rooms and fortified rooms such as the one Maggie and her girls were kept in.

The entire operation took up that city block. The businesses that sat atop of this place gave nothing away as to what lurked below the ground.

In their 18 hours of watching the building, the rookie agents noticed a lot of people came and went from the office, almost like shift change at the DEO. Their reports had Vasquez intriguingly researching the site’s background and vetting the tip about it being a CADMUS holding facility.

How could such a small little white building be a tentacle of a terrorist organization, officials would think afterward. Hindsight was always 20/20.

The searches for CADMUS tipped off Nettles and sooner rather than later they had agents on the outskirts of the block near the building reporting movement throughout the day and night. After six days of intelligence gathering, a plan was developed to raid the building and find out exactly what was going on there. No business license or other legal reason for so many people being there was on file anywhere in the city.

None of them knew what they would find when they stormed the building. They were prepared for the worse, but none had planned for the rescue of Maggie Sawyer.

Ironically, Jeremiah Danvers watched all the activity from four blocks away. He was stationed in a newly constructed cushy high-rise office building that had replaced the local grocery store of the neighborhood. The community was on the edge of a redevelopment. Construction was all around. The noise was a byproduct of all the change, so no one really noticed any changes in the neighborhood or the number of people at that little white concrete building.

A helicopter waited on the roof of the high-rise for Jeremiah’s escape. He monitored the entire raid through his own surveillance system and he hacked the NCPD SWAT body worn helmet cameras. The DEO was a bit more sophisticated, but the NCPD had yet to close a backdoor in their real-time feeds of BWCs. 

As soon as Maggie was found, Jeremiah smiled and left the city. His work on Project TAD was complete.

*********

It was fitting Alex was finally leaving the building, headed home to make up for being gone for so long. Alex was on the phone apologizing for her absence when the communication device in her left ear went to life, alerting her that Maggie Sawyer had passed out in her room. The agent’s voice was calm and nearly cold as he reported that Maggie’s vitals had dipped just before she collapsed on the floor.

Alex’s heart nearly stopped. She stuttered through an apology on the phone, regretful she had to return to work. The voice on the other end just muttered, “Of course” before the call ended.

Director Danvers had threatened everyone involved in Maggie’s recovery within an inch of their life that she be told of any changes, no matter the significance, to Maggie Sawyer and her daughters. Alex even got a daily update of how many calories each one consumed since their rescue. 

So naturally, Alex sprinted from the parking lot to the control room and learn Maggie had ordered everyone out of the room when she regained consciousness and she refused any medical tests or observations.

What else should Alex really expect, she thought to herself.

Alex blew out a breath of relief that Maggie was still among the living, but then one in frustration at the stubbornness of the woman. Alex had read the lab reports and saw chemical compounds in the facility. She suspected she knew what Maggie and her girls had been up against. Alex also knew the sounds of their desperate cries and whines during that first couple of days. It had not been pretty, but it was marginally finished in comparison to what they had been subjected to when they first arrived. Or so she thought.

Looking over the latest reports, Alex decided to veer from her planned direction of staying away from the tiny detective and her even tinier children.

No, now, it was time to visit an old friend, or at least Alex thought they could be friends. Some day. Maybe not today. Or even in a couple months. She expected anger, resentment and uncontrollable frustration from Maggie about the events.

Poking her head around the gray concrete wall of the doorway, of which the door was propped open, Alex said, “Hello.”

Alex peered around the corner and into the room she had only seen from the videos. It looked the same, but so much more real. Her heart pounded in her ears. She never imagined her life would be here now – looking for Maggie and her two children.

The new voice – an intrusion after Maggie’s blackout moment – startled Avery and Maggie. Both of which became overly protective of the youngest, Addison.

Alex chuckled at how the oldest daughter of Maggie Sawyer was a carbon copy of her mother.

But Alex couldn’t even properly form words let alone complete thoughts of the scene being played out before her with a mini-Maggie Sawyer and a second baby in tow of Maggie’s arms.

“I. I. I just. I just wanted to check on you. I know you collapsed. I. I didn’t see it. I. I was. I was told you collapsed. Earlier,” Alex said as she stumbled over her words like she was speaking for the first time in her life. “I was on the floor, nearby, and wanted to make sure you were OK. I came to check. . .”

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” Maggie said curtly. “We will be fine with some water and sleep.”

“Oh. . . . OK. OK. I. Would you mind if one of the doctors just checked over you one more time . . . to make sure?” Alex said quietly and fidgeted with her hands before running one through her short hair. “Just to . . . Just to make sure?”

Avery looked up at this woman with fear and apprehension. Alex almost swore that Avery did the same head tilt Maggie was infamous for when she questioned the person’s intentions.

While Maggie stared like Alex was a ghost appearing in a dream, Alex fidgeted like a child. Maggie just nodded. She knew she had to get her children to relax again, not to mention herself.

When in walked Alex Danvers to Maggie Sawyer’s secluded room with her children, the air in Maggie’s lungs had gone out and Maggie was back to the moment she had daydreamed about years ago when she thought of Alex saving her from her prison.

And this was NEVER how Maggie had pictured any of it going. This was the least favored option out of any of Maggie’s fantasies. She’d never even come close to this scenario, but yet here it was.

Alex stuttered and stumbled.

Maggie was cold and quick to answer. She was petrified.

Here was the woman Maggie had fantasied about, standing mere feet away and asking about her well-being and that of Maggie’s children. Damn!

“Sure,” Maggie motioned with her hands. “Let them come in again and check us again. It’s not like we haven’t been checked before,” Maggie said and shrugged. Her body language conveyed that.

Alex, hearing the sarcasm and fright in Maggie’s voice, waved off the team of doctors who stood inches away from her back at the door to the room. The team decided if Director Danvers was making an appearance they wanted to support her and be ready in a moment’s notice for her next orders.

Instead, Alex turned and grabbed a stethoscope and other needed items from her fellow physicians and then ordered them to continue on to their regular duties. The team scurried away.

Maggie raised an eyebrow at the response. Some things had changed, she thought. 

Taking a deep breath, Alex steeled her nerves and then walked deeper into the room.

“OK. I’ll check you first. If that’s ok?” Alex said and moved closer to Maggie and her girls.

Maggie sat up straighter and nodded. She was unable to speak, honestly.

Maggie felt her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t know Alex’s felt the same way.

Alex walked in, closer and then sat on the edge of the couch near Maggie and her girls.

Lifting the stethoscope to her ears, Alex held the end up and motioned to Maggie. The girls hunkered down to their mother, not knowing what was about to happen. Protectively, they held their tiny hands on Maggie’s upper chest as Alex inched closer.

Maggie grabbed at their hands and said, “It’s OK. She’s just listening to Mommy’s heart for glitches.”

They each sighed with their hand hands firmly in Maggie’s, and Alex surged forward with the end landing on Maggie’s chest above her heart. 

 

The warmth between the two women was just a hallucination Maggie thought. The near touch of Alex through the stethoscope was nothing. She was a different person now after all this time and surely Alex Danvers was as well.

The stethoscope had to be cold. It had to be.

It had been so long and so many changes.

Prison. Impregnation. Prison. Two children. Prison. Maggie thought. Nothing stays the same after that.

The noise in the stethoscope sounded so strong and loud, like a beat in a song, Alex thought.

But still, Alex listened closely and then closed her eyes, remembering how Maggie’s heart had sounded all those years ago when she had laid her head on the woman’s chest. This was not the same sound.

It was so bold now. Like thunder booming. Alex had lost herself in that the new sound was familiar, but yet so different.

It was a couple minutes later when Maggie coughed that Alex caught herself.

“You sound good. Strong. Really strong. Stronger than you did before. Do you? I mean, did you? Well, before, I’m sorry. I’ll note the lack of issues in your file,” Alex stumbled over herself. Again. Shaking her head. Alex was a mess.

Maggie suppressed a laugh that would have showcased her dimples at her ex’s nervousness. She remembered this side of Alex and thought for sure the woman had gotten over this silliness in the years of her absence. But Alex continued to surprise Maggie.

Alex took a penlight and shined it in each one of Maggie’s eyes, watching the pupils dilate. Normal.

Alex’s gaze wandered down to Addison, who was cradled in Maggie’s right arm secure against her chest. While Avery stood on the couch behind her mother with her little right hand holding on to Maggie’s chest, mere centimeters away from where Addison gripped Maggie’s black scrub shirt she’d been given by DEO staffers.

As if burned by fire when the little girl’s blue eyes bore into Alex’s, returning her stare, Alex jumped to her feet.

Standing tall, towering above Maggie and her daughters, Alex ran a nervous right hand through her shorter than ever hair, which Maggie actually found so attractive. Alex had never been so bold with her hair. Now, before her was a new Alex with that hair. 

“I’ll leave you to your girls and check on you later,” Alex said motioning with her hands to the children.

Then, Alex turned and swiftly walked out of the room. It was the oddest interaction Maggie had ever experienced with the woman.

It all happened too quick.

Maggie didn’t even have a moment to speak before Alex was gone. She wanted to ask her several questions, but she never had the opportunity.

As she lulled her babies to sleep, Maggie reflected on their interaction and how Alex Danvers looks now. Questions filled her brain faster than she could speculate to answer them. Maggie also began practicing at zeroing in on one particular sound, tuning out others. That night Maggie worked at this sound overload on her brain and how to contain it. She also heard all the whispers from the doctors and staffs and she learned from those conversations. Some things were not important, but gave Maggie an idea about current events, while others were imperative to know, but not unexpected.

Alex Danvers was DEO Director Danvers.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a new chapter. Thanks!

Alex immediately walked out of Maggie’s room, to the nearest office and grabbed the trash can and puked.

On her knees, feeling like she would die, Alex wondered how she would get through this with a nearby Maggie Sawyer and those children. Maggie’s beautiful fucking children, Alex thought to herself. How could Maggie not want those beautiful children, Alex thought, but then realized that Maggie had embraced motherhood more than Alex would have ever expected.

The woman was comfortable in it and even an expert at it.

The girls adored their mother. Avery even showed a protective streak that was so similar to her mother. And their piercing blue eyes with Maggie’s dimples were swoon-worthy, Alex thought. They were the most beautiful children she’d ever seen.

But they were Maggie’s children. Not what could have been Alex and Maggie’s children. She chuckled to herself as she cleaned up in a nearby bathroom. 

“Yeah, no one wanted to have children with you,” Alex said to herself in a mirror. “In this life, you are on your own.” 

She had adopted that mantra, only months after Maggie Sawyer had last walked out of her apartment. Alex had found herself on the floor many days after that, wishing and praying for the woman to return. Maggie’s words were on loop in her head for so long, how the tiny detective only wanted her.

It had not been any of her finer moments. But once the world-killers and Reign had shown up, Alex was forced to refocus herself on her missions at the DEO and Kara.

Kara, also Supergirl, of course, had never doubted her sister’s abilities or strength, but she allowed her to falter and grieve the loss of the relationship because J’onn had told her the ultimate loss was that of such a close relationship on Earth.

Kara thought about her rocky times with Alex and understood that she could never allow Alex to slip away from her, but that such grief was understandable. Kara had never been so connected to anyone on Earth, but Alex, so thinking about losing her was such turmoil and pain that Kara understood everything.

“I would die for you,” Kara said one night while rocking Alex, who was so drunk she didn’t understand anything, only days after Maggie had left their shared apartment. “I would take away all of this pain if I could. But you will appreciate her love and everything she taught you one day. I know you will.”

Nowadays, Kara felt guilty, knowing that Maggie was alive and safe, just miles away from everyone. She felt a guilt that she had never really searched for Maggie or cared where she went because of all the pain Alex had suffered at her absence. Kara spent her time and efforts to ease Alex’s pain and suffering. But what should she do now? 

Kara stood watching and hearing everything, but unsure of what to do for anyone.

As Maggie lulled her girls to sleep that night, the same time, down the hall in another tower of the building, Alex thought about Maggie, the girls and what should be her next move, while she sat in her office drinking from a stash of whiskey in her desk.

Hours after that last encounter with Maggie when Alex lost her stomach contents again, but this time from too much whiskey.

Kara heard Alex and went to her. She gently rocked Alex, who was drunk, sobbing and barely conscious, so similar to those early days when the relationship ended. Alex continued to mumble about Maggie even deep in her sleep brought on by the enormous amount of alcohol consumed, she cried out her guilt over Maggie. 

Lately, Alex had only missed Maggie when she was drinking like this. Her friends had understood the issue and never let her get drunk when her new girlfriends were around. She had nearly completely stopped drinking.

Today, holding her still, Kara kissed Alex’s temple and spoke soothing words. The woman was passed out from exhaustion, too much alcohol and too emotion flowing through her veins that her entire body ached before fatigue and booze pulled her into a fitful sleep.

Alex had never left the DEO, but she had double, if not triple dipped into her desk bottle, after that encounter with Maggie Sawyer and her daughters. She was missing someone, some life, that had broken her years ago.  
She was missing that Maggie Sawyer and the life she could have had with her all those years ago.

The picture that was before Alex of Maggie and her daughters was what Alex had imagined all those years ago of them being a family and growing old together.

**********

Alex sobered. She showered. After Reign destroyed one tower of the DEO, major renovations had occurred on the top floors. The containment cells remained the same, but the rest was changed completely. Alex’s office had a room at the back that held a bed, closet, and bathroom. 

After her appointment to director, Alex lived in the quarters more than she did in her own apartment. That was until her friends realized she was working too much and pushed her to get back to her life.

They pushed her back into the social scene of happy hours, dinners and other events. They scheduled things just for Alex’s benefit. And soon all that lead to Alex getting a date with a barista at the local coffee shop. She went. The relationship didn’t last. But it got Alex Danvers back in the swing of her life.

Today, a woman waited at home for Alex and questioned her whereabouts. It was a woman that Alex had daydreamed of marrying and sharing her life with, but something stopped Alex from making those plans a reality with her. They had been together for about nine months now. They had said their “I love you” and the next logical steps were those plans.

It had been six days since the mission and Alex had yet to return home. She promised Emma that she would be home tonight. So, to make good on that, Alex decided she had to clear her thoughts and head. To do so meant she had to talk to Maggie Sawyer.

Maggie was brushing Avery’s hair and not prepared for any interruptions by Alex Danvers.

When the door opened with a knock, Maggie looked up but didn’t stop her chore. She held her face just like the detective she once was. Addison slept on the nearby bed, oblivious to any interruptions.

“Can I help you?” Maggie said without missing a beat on Avery’s hair. Avery tensed at the woman returning to their room, but she continued to hold a little car and rolled it over her hand and arm.

Staffers had learned Addison slept every day at this time and knew not to disturb the little family. Maggie’s reputation as a fierce detective was cemented now as a fierce mother. Alex missed the memo on that particular detail, which was kind of important for Maggie to give anyone a moment of her time these days.

“Uh. Yes. No. Yes. Uh. It can wait. I’ll come back later when you aren’t busy,” Alex didn’t think beyond what she would actually say to the woman, and the sight before her hit like a ton of bricks literally.

At that moment, Alex realized she didn’t belong anywhere in Maggie’s life. Just like Maggie didn’t really fit anywhere in her current life. She had a girlfriend at home. A girlfriend she was likely months away from proposing to and then marrying. They both agreed on what they want, months ago. Emma had checked every box Alex had developed as prerequisite after Maggie. 

A life with Maggie Sawyer was years removed now.

But Emma was not Maggie Sawyer. There would never be another Maggie Sawyer, Alex had deducted years after their split.

“OK,” Maggie said at the moment and continued to brush Avery’s hair.

After the initial glance, Maggie never looked back at Alex.

Alex backed out the door and sighed at the click of the handle. She should have known better. What was she thinking? Why did she think she could just barge right in? Maggie wasn’t at her disposal. Maggie wasn’t even the Maggie she had known and loved, was she?


	13. Chapter 13

Maggie finished brushing Avery’s hair and forced the 3-year-old to nap.

The act of brushing the toddler’s hair usually relaxed her enough to sleep. Maggie sat on the floor next to the edge of the bed for a while running her hand up and down the girl’s back. When her daughter was sleeping, Maggie stood, shook out her foot that tingled and then tucked her girls in for their afternoon nap. 

Since their rescue, Maggie spent the time trying to get herself under control of what was next in their lives. This was only the second day they were back on their routine of naps, meals and normal activities they had done while being captives in that dungeon. But her girls didn’t know any difference.

Maggie paced around the room quietly. She felt unsettled, unnerved.

Maggie itched to get out of the DEO confines. To get started on a new life. Her girls deserved that. To play at a real park, to eat dinner in a restaurant, to see other people on the street, and play with other children. Maggie knew her goals, she just had to figure out how to get there.

In her downtime, Maggie had studied how to get her hearing under control. It was manageable, she had worked hard during her sleepless nights and finally was able to zero in where she wanted while allowing her peripheral hearing to remain on guard. Maggie actually felt safer now because she could hear when someone was approaching their hallway, specifically their door. She could prepare for any threats. 

She could hear when Alex or Kara Danvers were approaching and prepare her emotions. It had saved her and she was thankful because she could not break down in front of that woman.

Maggie’s enhanced hearing had allowed her the opportunity to learn so much these last few days too. 

Alex was the director and in a relationship with Emma. The woman sounded sweet on the phone. Maggie pictured a small blonde, younger than her or Alex. The woman was a junior bank executive.

The couple had met when Alex purchased her new condo. It was the fourth place she had lived after selling the original condo that she had shared with Maggie – too many memories. And after the mortgage on the new place was settled, Alex asked Emma out. Maggie didn’t know any of that yet.  
But Maggie did know that on the phone Emma asked all the right questions of Alex and seemed to worry about her lover’s health and well-being. 

Maggie realized old habits are hard to shake when the woman told Alex that morning that she had been at work for too long. The woman then shocked Maggie when she took a stern voice and demanded Alex come home that night. Alex apologized and said she would be there.

So, Maggie learned that Alex was in love and living with Emma. She wasn’t surprised, actually relieved. 

Maggie had wondered the night after Alex’s first appearance in her room what would happen when they saw each other again and Alex met her children.

She didn’t want Alex to seek her out because she had checked that one box that was so vital to Alex that Maggie didn’t need in her life at that time, or to exist in Alex’s life anymore all those years ago.

Life was cruel sometimes, Maggie thought and laughed at herself. She rubbed Addison’s cheek and decided she had been so wrong.

She had tried so desperately to outrun that storm of having children, but now Maggie couldn’t imagine her life without these little monsters. She was addicted to them. Maggie enjoyed the thought of seeing life through her daughters’ eyes.

Maggie thought if Alex had someone she was responsible to then Maggie and her daughters could slip out of Alex’s focus and she could start to rebuild a life with her girls.

But then Maggie realized she had no idea how to do life with children on her own.

Panic set in and Maggie had an attack that she was so accustomed to having when they were in captivity. With her head between her knees, Maggie struggled for a moment. She alerted no one and they were none the wiser.   
Maggie focused herself back on other conversations that she could hear. She could do that now. It helped calm her and she heard a tech talking of Kara’s latest article. She focused and calmed down.

Kara was a top, respected reporter and had appeared to balance her Supergirl duties with her Kara Danvers life.

Since the rescue, Kara checked in every day on Maggie and the girls. She asked important questions about their activities and left things for them with staffers. Maggie smiled when that morning Kara left Noonan’s sticky buns for Maggie and girls as a breakfast treat.

The girls loved them. With her little arm raised to the sky, Avery declared this breakfast a “suuusex” and thanks to Supergirl. The 3-year-old was still working on properly speaking her words. Her limited human interactions meant she only spoke the words Maggie did and “success” was not one spoken during their captivity. The girl learned it a day ago when the doctors spoke. She asked her mom what it mean and how to say it again.

Kara heard the whole conversation and smiled that she had managed to make the morning start well for Maggie and her girls.

Supergirl had yet to return to see the girls, but they were prepared to meet her again. Avery was even excited after reading through a book with Maggie one night before bed. The girl remembered seeing the superhero and hearing her mother tell her stories was exciting that someone in a book was real and their friend.  
Kara decided she’d get more sticky buns and return later for the little Sawyer family.

Maggie heard the doctors discussing another round of blood work and scans. She sighed as she cleaned up their breakfast mess. The girls played in their corner of the room where a growing number of toys were starting to spill into the living quarters of their room.

When the doctors walked in, Maggie confronted them about when they would be ready for medical release. All the white coats agreed it was not the time. Maggie peppered them with questions about when would be the right time and why were they continually being held here.

The doctors, two men and a pretty redheaded woman (Maggie noted), agreed if all the day’s tests came back clear they would move to the second phase of her rescue.

Reintroduction to society.

Maggie agreed and got the girls ready for their tests.

Bloodwork was done. The girls didn’t even cry. They were familiarized with these things being under the spotlight as prisoners. The scans took a bit longer because Addison got fussy.

Maggie trusted no one, so she refused to allow anyone to separate her and her daughters. 

They all returned to their room and Maggie immediately put the girls down for an afternoon nap. Both were fussy and ready for it. Maggie was also ready to clear her head with a few minutes of her girls being occupied. 

Maggie had restarted her yoga sessions since their rescue. It centered her and helped her stay fit.  
They ate an early dinner and then went to their daily visit to the courtyard.

Toys littered the area thanks to the girls who were gifted some balls, a little plastic scooter and a newly installed swing next to the tree. Maggie knew Alex had ordered the outdoor equipment, but she couldn’t bring herself to think of it as a gift.

The girls were nearing the end of playtime and beginning to fuss, ready for their baths and bedtime when Supergirl landed next to Maggie, who was holding Addison while Avery swung back and forth.

“Hi,” Supergirl said and waved to Avery, who jumped from her swing and ran to her mother’s legs to look up at the superhero. Addison sat straighter in her mom’s arms and watched the caped woman.

The 10-month-old held her chubby arm out and pointed to the caped woman and said “Su geril.” Not being able to pronounce her words correctly Addison was sure she said Supergirl, to which her sister replied “Supergirl!” 

The baby’s smile showcased her growing dimples and her older sister’s face mirrored her. Maggie even gave a genuine smile at the scene and her daughter’s happiness.

Kara celebrated the little family by smiling back and squealing. Neither child was as scared as they were the first time they met the caped hero, and Supergirl swooped in to entertain and delight the children for another hour.

Their blue eyes delighted at the antics of Supergirl. They’d never seen a woman so ready to do anything to make them laugh. Their dimples were cemented in their cheeks by the end of the session because they had each laughed beyond expectations.

When Addison’s head drooped against her mother’s chest, Maggie declared an end to the evening. Supergirl frowned as did Avery. The duo had become fast friends during this meeting.

Supergirl picked the three-year-old up and sat her atop her shoulders as they walked back into the DEO while Maggie cradled a sleeping Addison, who was exhausted, close to her chest for the trek back to their bunk. Maggie tucked Addison into bed while Supergirl laid Avery down next to her sister and told her it was time to go to sleep. 

Maggie turned the lights down and Avery was asleep before Maggie and Supergirl had backed away from the bed. Supergirl motioned to Maggie and they walked into the hallway.

“How are you?” Kara asked and fidgeted with the fabric on her hand of her super suit.

“I’m good, thanks,” Maggie said without hesitation. She smiled, but it didn’t fully reach her eyes.

Kara squared her shoulders and stood directly in front of the small detective and sternly said, “No, I mean how are you, really. I cannot begin to imagine what you have been through. I want to help any way I can for you and those girls. But I also worry about how you are and how you are dealing with it and being free now. I want to help you deal with that in this transition. I also hope you go to the therapy that I’m sure they’ve recommended. I go every week and it’s really helped me these last few years.”

Taken aback by this grown-up version of Kara who was speaking to her like an authority without the Supergirl persona, Maggie paused and looked up at Kara. She studied Kara’s face for a few moments, while Kara kept a neutral face and her eyes focused on Maggie’s. 

“Well, I’m OK. The girls are adjusting and I just want out of here to start my life over again with them. To give them the life they deserve,” Maggie said. “I want them to experience everything they missed out on. They didn’t know what ice cream was until they got here.”

Tears filled the corners of Maggie’s eyes at that revelation. She looked down the hallway and away from Supergirl. She hadn’t really spoken to anyone about what had happened. She met with the therapist once, but that meeting wasn’t fulfilling and Maggie wasn’t sure who she could trust or if she could trust herself to talk about what had happened these last few years.

Kara nodded and her face faltered a bit from the smile she usually carried, before she said, “Yeah I heard.”

“Is that why you keep bringing treats to us?” Maggie said and tilted her head back to look at Kara again, her face emotionless.

“Yes,” Supergirl said with a slight smile and like a nervous Danvers woman. Maggie noted the similarities to the elder Danvers in her body language at that moment.

“It’s OK. I actually like it. The girls love it,” Maggie said with another head tilt, this one softer and she smiled with her dimples showing for the first time to another adult since their rescue without the prompt of her children. “Thank you for everything. I know you, and even Alex, have helped us more than we could ever repay you.”

Waving her hand in front of her, Supergirl leaned against the wall and said, “You don’t have to thank us for anything, it’s the least we could do, Maggie. We want to make sure you and your girls are taken care of.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said sincerely.

Supergirl tilted her head and got a far-off look on her face. Maggie knew it meant she was hearing trouble. 

Ironically, Maggie heard it too.

A fire at an apartment complex 16 blocks away. Firefighters weren’t there yet, but the explosion signaled something was wrong. Supergirl missed Maggie’s recognition of hearing the exact same thing.

“Go, Kara. But come back and see us, please,” Maggie said and surprised herself at the words.

“Yes, I will be back. Thanks,” Supergirl said as she reached out and squeezed Maggie’s hands before she left, flying from a nearby balcony.

Maggie listened as Supergirl got to the fire, used her freeze breath to contain it and help everyone evacuate. She then zeroed back in on the sleeping sounds of her two angels. 

Maggie sighed and went into their room, closed the door and went to bed. She felt a tiny weigh lifted after having a normal conversation with Kara. She also smiled at the memories of the girls being entertained by Supergirl that evening.

Progress, Maggie thought. She’s making progress to get back to normal and show her children what life has to offer.


	14. Nettles came to visit

The next morning Kara replayed the previous day’s events with Maggie and her girls during the weekly sister breakfast.

Alex sighed and admitted she didn’t know how to feel about the situation, Maggie, and her two girls. Alex also confessed she had lied to Emma about the seeing the Sawyer family.

“I told her I was fine that I had moved on and seeing her with these kids was no big deal, just another mission. But, honestly, Kara I don’t know if I ever did move on,” Alex said. “And now seeing those two perfect little girls and how Maggie is such a good mother, despite everything, I’m so confused. I told Emma that it was all good. I told her everything I could about the rescue, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how much stress I feel about finding Maggie has brought to me. Some days I feel frozen in time like it’s only weeks after we broke up.”

“Alex, you can’t go there. You know it and so do I. Not to mention, you and Emma are doing so great. You need to be completely honest with her. I mean you just moved in together and she’s good for you,” Kara said. “Maggie has a long road ahead of her and we need to be as supportive as possible as her friends. She needs us to be there. She has no one, but us and that policeman that keeps coming by leaving things for her.”

“Speaking of, did he ever go see her?” Kara asked.

“No, he said he wasn’t ready to see her just yet, but he’s brought stuff for her and the girls nearly every day,” Alex said. “Those light up shoes Avery had on yesterday were from him. I watched her dance around for 20 minutes after she opened the box and put them on. She was so excited and Maggie genuinely looked happy.”

“Yeah, I saw them and they were so cute,” Kara said. “That little girl is a carbon copy of Maggie, while Addison is like a blonde version of Maggie. Their little dimples are to die for. I mean who wouldn’t melt at that.”

Kara covered her mouth with her hand.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

Alex smiled, shook her head and waved her hand at Kara before she said, “They are the perfect little Maggie Sawyers. I knew she would have beautiful children. I hate how they came about and were forced into her life though. But she seems like she’s fine now with being a mother. I told Dr. Simon that they didn’t have to worry about Maggie’s stability to care for those girls because it’s evident she cares and loves them no matter how they occurred.”

“Wait, you’ve been back to see Maggie and actually talked to her again?” Kara suddenly asked, her eyes wide. A half-eaten sticky bun paused about 10 inches from her mouth.

“No. I. I, uh, I have watched them. On the cameras,” Alex said shyly. “I told you about the only time other than when she collapsed.”

“Oh Alex, why are you doing that? Just go talk to her,” Kara said. “Have a conversation. She was easy to talk to yesterday.”

“Kara, I tried, but she was so cold and she made me so nervous like when I first met her. I couldn’t even form a sentence,” Alex admitted while she played with her nearly empty coffee cup and a napkin on the table.

“Alex you’ve got to just go tell her you are there for her and will help. Don’t put any pressure or expectations on her. She’s got enough to deal with right now,” Kara said. “Try to be her friend.” 

“Yeah, I suppose you are right,” Alex said after a long sigh before she smiled. “When did you get so smart?”

************

Back at the DEO that morning, the previous day’s tests came back and startled one of the doctors.

Maggie’s blood appeared to have changed from the initial sample taken the day they were rescued. He ordered the tests to be conducted again as well as several subsequent tests. He also alerted his supervisor, who then went directly to Director Danvers with the news, but she had yet to arrive at the base. The trio decided to wait until the subsequent tests were finished before disclosing to her to their findings to the director.

They gathered around a monitor in the control room that showed Maggie and her daughters in the mess hall eating breakfast.

They all noted that Maggie had oatmeal, a double toasted dry bagel and was picking at the remnants of Avery’s bowl of cereal. The little girl was too busy making her Supergirl action figure fly off the table and to her chair to eat more this morning. 

Addison was quietly eating in her highchair and watching the DEO agents mill about the room getting coffee. The younger Sawyer was much more muted compared to her sister. She almost always would rather watch things happen than be involved.

One of the technicians pulled Maggie’s records and observed that her caloric intake had begun to increase with each passing day. He began reading her charts until the others told him to shut up.

Maggie had also noted the same findings, but she thought it was because this was the first time in so many years that she had real edible food. Well, real in what was made at the DEO and what was leftover daily after Supergirl visited. But it was ten times better than what they had in that dungeon. 

Maggie heard some discussions when her name was mentioned and she stopped with a cereal/milk filled spoon about a third of the way to her mouth. She listened and couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She twisted her head around the room as if looking to see if anyone else noticed what those doctors were discussing four floors above her.

She took a deep breath and realized her day’s plans to start using some of the educational books with Avery would likely have to wait until another time. She was about to be intensely scrutinized.

The doctors and staff watching Maggie kept talking until one member stopped and really watched. The technician began to furiously scribble in her notes on her tablet before she held it up for the others to see.

“She hears us. Watch her!” was all the note said.

All them went silent. Maggie’s head tilted. Then she returned to eating Avery’s cereal. 

*******

It had been a couple hours since breakfast and the girls were taking their morning nap, while Maggie had just finished her yoga session. She would often go find more coffee at the nurse’s station down the hallway from their room.

While there, a nurse told Maggie she had a visitor if she was up for it. Maggie was about to protest that she shouldn’t have anyone there to see her when Nettles poked his head out of a nearby office and caught her eye.  
Putting her hand over her mouth to hold in some of the emotions, Maggie could only nod at him. The man walked the short distance and before Maggie could even comprehend that he was standing before her, then he pulled her into a tight hug.

“Oh God, Maggie. I’m so sorry. I should have known and done better,” Nettles said into her hair at her left ear. But Maggie could have heard that whisper from 20 blocks away. She sobbed.

For the first time since her rescue, Maggie Sawyer broke down and actually ugly cried into the man’s shoulder for what seemed like a year. After Maggie calmed down a bit, the nurse steered Nettles and Maggie into a nearby room for some privacy.

Nettles never let go of Maggie’s shoulder and he sat down next to her on the couch, pulling her to him and just held her. She broke down again and sobbed. And then again. It seemed she couldn’t control her sobs around this man.

The girls woke from their nap and Avery immediately began to scream for her mother when she looked around and didn’t find the woman, while Addison just watched her sister and a nurse who ran out of their room.

Maggie ran into the room only seconds after Avery’s scream for her mom. In their mother’s arms, Avery calmed down immediately while Addison watched over her mother’s shoulder at the tall lanky man who had walked in a couple minute after their mother. Neither girl noticed Maggie’s red-rimmed eyes or wet cheeks.

Maggie turned toward Nettles with both girls in her arms and walked to him at the door of their room.

“Nettles, these are my daughters,” Maggie said her voice thick with emotion and shaky. Maggie had only calmed down moments before Avery’s scream. “This is Avery, and this is Addison.”

“Hi little ones,” Nettles said and leaned down to the girls. The man was 6’4, so he towered over Maggie’s tiny frame and the girls in her arms when he straightened back up to his full height. “Hold on. I brought you, girls, something. Don’t move.”

Nettles left the room and returned a moment later with a bag. He pulled out two dolls, made to look like the girls. One had dark hair and the other blonde hair. Both with blue eyes and dressed in jeans, shirts and leather jackets. Just as he saw their mother in his mind’s eye.

“Me?” Avery said looking at the doll, then back to Nettles before she turned to her mother.

“Yes, sweetheart. She looks like you. I made sure of it,” Nettles said and handed the doll to Avery, who started to squirm to get down from her mother’s hip.

Maggie lowered the little girl to the ground and Nettles dropped to one knee to present the doll to her. The girl smiled widely and took it before holding it up to her mom and sister. Nettles noted how much the girl looked just like Maggie Sawyer at that moment.

The younger girl, Addison, wiggled to get her little hands on the doll that had blonde hair. Nettles stood and held out the doll to Addison. She greedily accepted it and held it as best as her little chubby hands would allow her.

Maggie’s eyes filled with tears again. She looked up to Nettles and he waved his hand in front of her.

“Avery, why don’t you take your sister and go play with your new dolls? What do you think about that?” Nettles said.

“Moma, can we?” the toddler said. Maggie just shook her head and turned to take Addison to the play area of the room where toys were scattered on a padded mat in the corner.

Once they were set up, Maggie turned to Nettles and he pulled her into a tight hug again. She cried for the third time that day, but she kept some semblance of herself. He stood there holding Maggie while she watched her girls play with their dolls. Avery showed Addison how to make the doll walk, sit and stand.

Nettles left the room soon with a promise to return to see Maggie and the girls. They never really talked about Maggie’s breaks or what had happened to her.

Afterward, Maggie realized she needed that emotional outburst. She felt lighter. But she regretted not talking more to Nettles and she was slightly embarrassed at how easily she lost her cool so many times at his kind gestures.

*********

Doctors and staffers watched the interactions and had alerted Director Danvers to the changes. Unfortunately, Alex pulled the video feeds as soon as she exited a conference call. She was not prepared to see the tiny detective so emotional. Alex closed her office door and asked to not be disturbed until her 3 p.m. meeting. She cried and watched the moments repeatedly.

Maggie had taken the girls to the courtyard to eat their lunches they had gathered from the mess hall. It was a beautiful day and Maggie wanted her children to be outdoors as much as possible. The fresh air was energizing.  
Maggie also secretly wanted to test herself after hearing that morning’s conversations about her recent tests. The doctors had not a chance to brief their Director on the new test results. The subsequent tests had confirmed the earlier findings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nettles finally came to visit and stayed. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who continues to stay with this story. I hit a bit of a writer's block, but I may have figured out that particular issue.
> 
> Again, thank you to everyone who continues to follow this story. I appreciate it more than you know.


	15. 25 percent of normal

Sitting in the dark, watching the video of Maggie meeting Nettles next to the nurse’s station again, it played in front of Alex, her eyes glassy from the tears and emotions raging in her body. She watched as they moved to a nearby empty room, similar to Maggie’s but smaller. They sat on the couch and Nettles held Maggie while she sobbed. Her body wracked with emotion.

But then Maggie darts up and faster than normal and she’s out of the room. Alex had not noticed the movement the 10 other times she had watched the video on loop. But this time Alex stopped the video, then she pulled up the camera in Maggie’s room before splitting the screen. Then, she started the video again.

Maggie kept her head on Nettles shoulder for a few minutes after she had visibly stopped shaking. The tears weren’t visible on her face, but the emotion on her face was. Avery’s head raised sleepily from the bed she shared with Addison. In a second of looking around the room, she said “mamma. . . . . . Mamma.”

And before she could scream, Maggie was up and down the hall into the room in a blur.

Alex paused the video. She searched the servers for the hallway video. Two cameras from either end of the hallway showed the entrance to the room where Maggie and Nettles sat while another set showed the room where Maggie and her girls lived. Alex split the screens again to show all the angles. 

She hit play again.

Maggie’s form didn’t even register on the hallway cameras.

Alex gasp.

She hit play again on the videos. This time only the hallway videos visible on her screen. Nothing. Alex slowed them to 75 percent of their regular speed. She thought she saw a blur. She slowed it to half speed and saw a recognizable blur. She slowed the speed down again to 25 percent of normal speed and she could distinguish Maggie Sawyer’s form running from the room to her girls.

“Holy shit!” Alex said aloud.

She played the video again. Again. And again.

It was lunchtime, so Alex immediately got up and quickly walked to the mess hall to find the other woman.

All eyes fell on Director Danvers as she hurriedly came into the hall where dozens of DEO agents and staffers were eating lunch. Alex scanned the room but didn’t see the tiny Sawyer family.

She turned on her heels and went to the floor where they lived. She walked into their room, but she didn’t see them. Alex ran to the nurse’s station and asked where Maggie and her girls were at.

“They are in the courtyard eating lunch outside,” the nurse said looking at her director with a concern.

Before Alex could hastily walk down to the courtyard, she was stopped by Dr. Simon. News of a change to Maggie’s lab results stopped her in her tracks. Alex returned to his office, closed the door and they began to talk. 

Discussions about biochemistry and other advanced processes in Maggie’s body were soon on the forefront of all the conversations. 

All thoughts Alex had about confronting Maggie over the video disappeared once she comprehended what Dr. Simon had found.

XXXXXXXX

Meanwhile, Maggie and her girls ate their lunch in the courtyard, and Maggie heard every word of the discussion about her lab results from Dr. Simon, Alex and all the other doctors on her case. She stilled several times when they discussed her treatment options which included detoxing her body of the chemicals they assumed were causing the anomalies because it had to be from her imprisonment since the air was toxic around the cells in the dungeon.

Maggie kept her cool. She was always so stoic. That detective face held its place in her life even now. If someone looked close in her eyes, they could see the cracks, but no one who would understand ever got that close. Not anymore.

She allowed her children to go play on the swing and with other toys in the courtyard. 

Maggie knew the storm was coming for them, but she decided she could shield her children for a few more hours. She encouraged them to play and laugh and love each other. She did not know what would happen when they stopped pretending everything was normal.

She held her breathe and waited, though she didn’t know she was holding it.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Standing in her private bathroom, Alex splashed water on her face again. It had been four minutes since she’d left Dr. Simon’s office with news that Maggie was not the same Maggie she had been so many years ago. How could Alex explain this to Maggie? How could Alex explain it to herself?

She didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. She splashed water on her face again. She thought it would give her answers or at least wake her up more.

Alex thought about how she would love to go to her office, sit, have a shot of something strong before she had to explain this new phenomenon to Maggie of all people. But Alex realized she couldn’t bake in that luxury. She couldn’t stay behind her doors and be a coward to allow this life to slip in and become the new normal for Maggie without an explanation. Alex knew Maggie was smart and would catch on soon if she hadn’t already.

Unbeknownst to Alex, Maggie had heard every discussion and didn’t need an explanation about her recent changes.

She knew and she expected.

But still they had to talk, everyone had agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for sticking with this story and reading. It means the world to me. 
> 
> Every time I write for this story, it takes me to a place I never planned on in my head. It's got a life of its own, so I'm just relaying what needs to be out there. It's literally writing itself, so, for those who've asked, I don't know how it will end, Sanvers or not. 
> 
> I do apologize for all of that including the sporadic updates. Work and real life get in the way, pesky stuff. But I keep pushing it away and living in this world, even if it's only at stop lights and during the boring workday moments. 
> 
> Sincerely, thank you again!


	16. A panic attack times two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And you think this isn’t challenging for me,” Maggie said, her teeth gritted to the point that they sounded like grinding papers. “You have no idea what I’ve been through or what I’m dealing with at this moment. Just because Alex has a hard moment doesn’t mean the world stops. She doesn’t get to control how things happen now. She lost that privilege when she decided I wasn’t worthy of being in her life. That’s something you don’t easily forget.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you, friends, for your continued interest in this idea. I'm working better to give you more timely updates. Well, at least until work picks up again likely in January.

It was after dinner and Maggie was sitting in the courtyard, dreaming of a normal life when she heard the footsteps coming down the hallway closing in on her family.

Maggie knew her trust of anyone outside of herself was dwindling. She also knew any normalcy she had hope for herself or her girls was gone with this new revelation. She thought about how she and her girls may never be free now.

The footsteps grew louder and Maggie held Addison a little tighter to her chest. The girl had turned fussier than usual while playing outside. Maggie held the little girl before the onslaught of probes and tests she predicted for herself and the girls.

Without looking up, she waited. The footsteps continued and then stopped.

Maggie dared to peek over her shoulder while she cradled Addison and saw Alex Danvers standing at the entrance to the courtyard with a look of trepidation on her face.

“Hi,” Alex said and waved her left hand. “Can we talk?”

Maggie shook her head and motioned to Alex to come in and sit next to her and Addison.

Crooking her head to the side, Maggie stared at Alex as she blinked. 

Alex was transported back to years ago with that slight head tilt. They were sitting at their dining room table in Alex’s old apartment talking about having children and why Maggie was so opposed to the idea. Alex lost herself in that moment juxtaposed to the sight before her with Maggie’s two little girls before her. 

A rush of heat flashed on Alex’s face, her hands turned clammy and she felt like her body was sinking in quicksand.

Then, Alex couldn’t breathe all the while Maggie stared and blinked at her. Alex couldn’t find any footing. She couldn’t calm down.

Alex ducked her head down to her knees, but air would not enter her lungs. She tried to force it. She tried every method she’d learned to help someone hyperventilating, but nothing was working.

Maggie had jumped up while holding Addison and was rubbing Alex’s back. 

But the touch burned Alex.

She couldn’t catch her breathe any easier with Maggie touching her, looking her at like that. She needed to stop. Time needed to stop.

Sensing the blinding panic, Alex realized she had to flee and so she ran from the courtyard. Her chest heaved as she rounded a corner out of eyesight from the Sawyer family and the tears spilled out of her eyes.

Alex left a stunned Maggie and confused Avery and Addison, who each questioned their mother about the sudden departure of Alex. Maggie waved and said that the director had a sudden illness and had to go to the restroom, both girls sighed in agreement they understood that calling.

Meanwhile, Maggie listened to Alex run to her office and hyperventilate again while tears ran down her face. Kara had flown in at the sound of Alex’s abnormal heartbeat and was now holding her sister as she sobbed.

Maggie smiled and encouraged Avery to continue her playtime. Addison soon joined her sister and the smile never left Maggie’s face at her daughters. The girls spent the early evening playing joyfully in the courtyard until it was time to go inside and get ready for bed.

Once the girls were sleeping, Maggie asked the nurse to sit with them while she went to the main hall.   
Maggie found Kara Danvers walking down a corridor and was startled when the superhero turned on her heel and met the small detective in the hallway that Kara had vacated a moment earlier.

“What are you doing to Alex?” Kara asked imposing her full height over Maggie, a good two inches.

“Nothing,” Maggie said and shrugged. “She’s the one who made herself go into a full panic attack earlier and then she ran away.”

“Maggie,” Kara said and then sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Look, Alex being around you is not good for her. Can you just stay away from her?”

Maggie balled her fists at her side and then squared her shoulders to Kara, who was still in full Supergirl uniform. 

“Look, I didn’t ask Alex to come to see me. She came down on her own. She worked herself up into a full panic attack. I never said five words to her. But it’s still somehow my fault in your eyes, is that it?” Maggie challenged and was ready to take on the superhero.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Kara said and reached up to adjust the glasses that were no longer on her face at this moment. “Look she’s trying her best to be around you. She had come to terms with her goodbye to you years ago. This is difficult for her with you and the girls.”

Anger flashed through Maggie’s entire body.

“And you think this isn’t challenging for me,” Maggie said, her teeth gritted to the point that they sounded like grinding papers. “You have no idea what I’ve been through or what I’m dealing with at this moment. Just because Alex has a hard moment doesn’t mean the world stops. She doesn’t get to control how things happen now. She lost that privilege when she decided I wasn’t worthy of being in her life. That’s something you don’t easily forget.”

Shaking, Maggie backed away from Kara. Crocodile tears formed in her eyes as Maggie retreated back down the hallway to her girls. Her hands shook from the emotion and Maggie knew she couldn’t be seen by anyone at this moment.

She withdrew to the courtyard and huddled in the corner of the concrete walls to cry. The courtyard had no ceiling, only four concrete walls.

After a few moments, Maggie raised her head and leaned against the wall to stare at the night sky. She realized no one would hold her or her children hostage again.

Shooting up like a waterspout, Maggie flew away. She was so fast to abandon the corner she was crying in that she wasn’t even captured on the high-tech DEO cameras monitoring the area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What?! Maggie flew away?! Hmm. Some new developments my friends. Enjoy! More to come!


	17. Don't be looking back, it's not what you hoped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world had left them behind during their captivity, but they were free now and Maggie decided they would not be confined in any place. Today would be another turning point.
> 
> In a few hours, Maggie Sawyer would be a force to be reckoned with one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with this story. Some days, I think I know exactly where it's going, then I sit down to write and here we are again.

Maggie flew for what felt like hours, but in reality, was only about 10 minutes. However, she had clocked about 110 mph, so she was far away from National City and in the desert. She kicked up the dust and punched a boulder that was before her when she landed in the sand.

She raged in the sand and dust. Tears streamed down her face at the thought of how normal was so far from her grasp based on the conversations she had heard earlier, and the reaction Alex Danvers had when she was within eyesight of her.

Maggie fought herself into a tailspin until she was laying on the warm sand looking up at the blue dusty sky. She lay there breathing like she had run a marathon. 

She had no idea how she got there, but she just rested in the warmth of the earth.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Stunned, Kara had been left in that hallway, her mouth slightly agape after Maggie stormed off. 

This was not how Kara pictured her next contact with Maggie going. She never meant for the smaller woman to feel so inadequate or inconsequential. 

But that was exactly how Kara realized she left Maggie feeling.

Sinking down along the nearby wall, leaving a dent at the bottom, Kara held her head and wondered how she could fix her sister and the tiny detective she had just pissed off.

Kara sat in a puddle on the floor, realizing she had never seen that look in Maggie’s eyes. She didn’t know how to change it or fix it. Kara knew this was not the life Maggie would have ever chosen for herself, no, the life she had chosen had come and gone.

Kara blamed herself for not finding the woman or even really looking with the gusto she did for missing cats in trees. When the news came that the woman was gone, Kara never thought it was against Maggie’s will.

Kara just knew that Maggie saw into her soul during the confrontation and knew that the superhero didn’t care enough to save her, instead opting to push Alex into someone else’s arm.

Sitting on the cold concrete floor at the DEO, down a hallway leading to the offices, Kara cried for the first time since Maggie’s rescue. She sobbed uncontrollably.

She tuned out all the sounds of Maggie’s little girls sleeping peacefully. She ignored Alex’s tears of heartbreak from the floors above. 

Kara also tuned out the sounds of the city and any pleas from the helpless. Instead, she soaked in her misery. For a moment, she cried. Zoning out, her eyes were unfocused on the gray wall across from her. 

It wasn’t until Alex stormed by that Kara sat up. Kara’s tears had dried and she was just wallowing in her guilt. Alex took a deep breath and without looking down at her sister said to Kara that she was sorry for always dumping her emotions on her. She promised they’d talk more, but at the moment Alex said she’d been notified of a disturbance outside the city. Turning into her all business personality of Supergirl, Kara nodded and said she’d check out what had happened on the outskirts of the city. She took off in the general direction.

A few minutes later, Kara as Supergirl hovered over where Maggie lay in the desert sand. Broken boulders and dust peppered Maggie’s face as she looked up eyes unfocused with her chest heaving, just like Alex’s had.  
Kara slowly lowered herself next to the tiny woman.

Her scent permeated all around her, but Maggie never moved.

“Maggie,” Kara said slowly and quietly. “Maggie, are you OK?”

Her eyes a bit unfocused, Maggie turned her head to Kara and then recognition washed over her face. Maggie’s head turned to each side and then she jumped up to her feet. 

Kara moved closer and placed a comforting hand on Maggie’s upper arm, as she said, “Hey, it’s me, Kara. You are OK. Maggie, do you hear me?”

“I. I don’t know what exactly happened. I was so angry. I. How. How did I get here?” Maggie said as her body began to shake. 

“Let’s get you back to the DEO,” Kara said and placed her arm around Maggie, whose body leaned into the superhero. They took off. In flight, Kara activated her communication earpiece and alerted them she was coming back with Maggie.

Panic set in for Alex again and she ordered the nurses to keep a close eye on Maggie’s daughters.

When they landed, Maggie kept her head down, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Alex slowly approached her and asked if she would get checked out by the medical staff. Nodding, Maggie shuffled toward the medical ward.

When she was out of eyesight, Alex turned to Kara and asked what happened. Kara relayed how she found Maggie in laying in the sand, shattered boulders around her. Kara neglected to say much else.

After a short time, doctors found nothing wrong with Maggie and she was given a change of clothing and free to return to her room. She immediately went to her room, shocked she would just abandon her children.

Looking at the sleeping girls, Maggie sobbed. 

Since they were born, those girls were all Maggie had thought about. In a split second today, she had just left. She didn’t even think about them. The guilt wrecked Maggie and she wept even harder with her arms wrapped around her stomach.

Kara heard her quiet sobs and walked in behind her. Instinctually, Kara wanted to soothe Maggie so she wrapped her arms around the tiny woman from behind and just held her.

It was the second time Maggie cried uncontrollably since her rescue.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Alex had witnessed her return and decided she couldn’t talk to Maggie now. She went to her office, changed clothes, grabbed her helmet and left before Maggie was out of medical. She never saw Maggie crying or Kara comforting her because she was already gone from the DEO.

Arriving home, Emma greeted Alex with a long hug and passionate kiss. Alex had previously texted she would be late, but Emma had kept dinner warm and ushered Alex over to their dining table to sit. She plated the food and brought it to the table.

Alex smiled as best she could, thanked Emma for the food and ate. Alex cleared the table and insisted she would clean up the dishes.

“No, don’t,” Emma said. “I need you.”

She pulled her toward the bedroom and Alex feeling emotionally exhausted just allowed herself to be pushed to the bed. Emma removed her clothing and then Alex’s.

Alex allowed her mind to shut off and just feel Emma. She never closed her eyes, forcing herself to focus on the woman before her. Emma knew Alex was different, but Alex had often felt that way after tough days at work.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX 

Maggie had calmed herself and Kara left to changed clothes and retrieved some drinks for them. They sat in a nearby room drinking hot chocolate.

“I’m sorry. About earlier,” Maggie said fiddling with her cup and looking up at Kara for a few moments before back down to her hands. “I don’t really know what happened, but I know things are different for me now.”

“I’m sorry too,” Kara said and her eyes began to fill with tears. “I’m sorry I never found you and you had to suffer through what you went through. I’m sorry I didn’t look harder for you. I’m sorry we all thought you’d just left.”

Waving her hand in front of them, Maggie said, “You couldn’t have known. No one did. I was not one of those people who have a lot of close friends and let people in easily. Still, don’t. And I did want to disappear after Alex after we broke up.”

“But we should have tried harder,” Kara said. “Alex and I just want to be here for you now and for the girls. We want to help you get back to a life as normal as it can be for you and them now.”

“Yeah,” Maggie huffed. “I don’t think the DEO doctors agree with that. They want to ‘fix’ me. I don’t even know what’s wrong with me or what’s happening.”

Leaning closer over the table, Maggie whispered while looking Kara in the eye, “I hear everything. I feel so different. I can do things. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Kara leaned in closer too and nervously fiddled with her glasses. “I understand Maggie. I hear everything too. I promise I won’t let them hurt you or your girls.”

They talked well into the night about the changes Maggie had experienced. She had decided to take a chance on the superhero being able to help her. She didn’t tell her everything, but she said more than she had to anyone. She revealed more about herself since the capture than she had to anyone else. It was comforting at times to know another living being at least heard the horrors she had been subjected to during her captivity. 

Kara’s face never became judgmental, but only understanding and it spurred Maggie on to tell more and more.

Early that morning, Maggie crawled into bed with her kids and snuggled them close. She had determined she wouldn’t be a lab rat, nor would her children be.

The world had left them behind during their captivity, but they were free now and Maggie decided they would not be confined in any place. Today would be another turning point.

In a few hours, Maggie Sawyer would be a force to be reckoned with one way or another.


	18. Maggie is ready for the confrontation with Alex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rising to her feet, stealing her eyes to look at Alex, Maggie said, “NO. (And Maggie took a deep breath) “I can assure you that I will outlive you and make sure my girls survive these moments and never remember how they were brought into this world. We just need a chance to start over. You, you hold that chance. Let us go, Alex. Let us be free for a change.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments and kudos. I appreciate each and every one of you.   
> Happy New Year!

Addison was always the first to wake these days and she climbed on her mother’s chest to wake her for breakfast. Avery heard the commotion and just snuggled in closer to her mother’s side.

Soon, Maggie was opening her eyes smiling at the bundle of blonde curls that was sitting on her chest. Addison was laying atop Maggie, so her head was all Maggie could see until the little girl held up a doll, her chubby arms outstretched to the ceiling.

Maggie wrapped her arms around the girl and rolled away from Avery. Once up off the bed, Maggie pulled the covers up around Avery and then held a finger up to her mouth to motion for Addison to be quiet.

She then bounced the girl out of the room and into the bathroom. They both got ready for the day. Then Maggie returned to wake Avery. It was just after 7 a.m.

Once they were up and ready to go, Maggie ushered the girls toward the mess hall for breakfast. But as soon as she turned the corner out of her room and went by the empty room next door where she and Kara spent the night talking, she saw Kara had left breakfast for them. Noonan’s sticky buns and some other treats, as well as juice and coffee, were set up on the table along with two balloons for the girls.

Maggie smiled and steered the girls to their breakfast. Nothing but crumbs were left after they were finished. The girls asked to go outside to play, so they headed to the courtyard. On the way, Maggie stopped a nurse and asked her to send Director Danvers their way when she arrived.

Maggie was ready and present.

Renewed after a night of not thinking about anything but Emma’s body, Alex strode into the DEO with a spring in her step that morning. She met Dr. Simon and his team in the conference room. The latest scans and tests results displayed on the screen in the center of the room. They discussed the latest events of Maggie disappearing from the DEO. Only Kara knew she had flown from the courtyard.

At the end of the meeting, the group had decided to present Maggie with two options as to what would help her. They would detox her body with infusions to rid her body of any remnant chemicals from her captivity or they would aggressively try to lessen the muscle growth and tissue thickening with a series of treatments and blood transfusions. Or they could do both. All the doctors and scientists agreed this should return her to a normal level.

But none of them counted on Maggie’s stubborn spirit returning to her. 

XXXXXXXXXXXX

It was nearing lunchtime and Maggie was restless in the courtyard with her daughters. Supergirl stopped in to say hello to them an hour ago. Maggie decided it was time to go inside and get ready for lunch.

They would eat, the girls would nap and then she would find Alex.

Little did she know the doctors and Alex had different plans for them after lunch. Treatment time.

Maggie carried Addison while Avery skipped down the hallway to the mess hall in her light-up shoes thanks to Nettles. Both girls giggled when Maggie would sway Addison down toward the floor and then back up again. Her renewed strength meant she had no trouble lifting the chubby girl up and down.

They all ate in relative silence as if the girls sensed a change was coming. Soon after Avery was finishing her last cookie, she jumped down from her chair and stood to face her mother and sister. Her straightened back suggested she was ready for battle. Though she had no idea what that battle meant to a toddler, the girl seemed to understand.

Once lunch was cleaned up and finished, the girls were ready for their naps. Their mother had ensured they would be extra tired today after their morning session outside. Maggie lulled the girls to sleep. 

Knowing they would be out for the next hour or longer, Maggie crept out of the room and to the nurse station. 

“I need to see Director Danvers,” she said quietly. “And I need you to watch over the girls while they nap.”

The nurse had already been informed to send Maggie to conference room 4, so she directed the tiny woman that way. Opening the silver door handle, Maggie drew a long breath and step inside.

The woman was met with familiar eyes she’d dreamed about so many times. Otherwise, the room was empty.

“Maggie. Hi. Please come in and sit,” Alex said as if Maggie was about to purchase a condo.

The tone repulsed Maggie and she knew this was an uphill battle to free herself and her girls.

Alex began reciting Maggie’s latest test results and how they had changed since her initial assessment. She then laid out a plan about how to detox the woman and the girls, if necessary. When Alex spoke of her children, Maggie’s head shot up. She could handle the pain and torture, she had done it so many times before. But her children were where she drew the line. They were her untouchables. No. One. Touched. Avery. Or. Addison.

“No. No. No,” Maggie said and held her voice just above a whisper. “We aren’t doing any more tests. We are done being poked and prodded. They will never be subjected to what I was during that time. Do you hear me?”

“No, Maggie. I’m not saying they need to be tested. It’s a simple blood test for them. You are the one we are more concerned about,” Alex said and stepped closer to the smaller woman. “I want to make sure you will survive whatever it was they subjected you to during your captivity. It’s showing now in these recent tests and we don’t know what kind of impact it’s going to have on you. How it’s going to affect you in the long run, we just don’t know.”

Rising to her feet, stealing her eyes to look at Alex, Maggie said, “NO. (And Maggie took a deep breath) “I can assure you that I will outlive you and make sure my girls survive these moments and never remember how they were brought into this world. We just need a chance to start over. You, you hold that chance. Let us go, Alex. Let us be free for a change.”

“Maggie, I can’t. Not yet,” Alex said and reached up to rub her neck. “The doctors think it’s best if you go through one of these processes to reach a better solution for your life.”

“I’m not some lab rat, you can experiment on, Alex,” Maggie said firmly, but quietly. “I’m fine. I do have some adjustments, but I’ve done a lot to help myself with that and Kara has agreed to help too. She’s been through this. She knows. You must believe your sister.”

“Maggie, you can’t understand what’s happened to you because you haven’t seen the lab results,” Alex said. “Kara doesn’t know what’s been done to you, she’s only giving you unsound advice.”

“Alex, I was there. I know everything that was done to me!” Maggie shouted. “I know I only need a chance at a fresh start with my kids. We can survive this and be better. We’ve come this far. Give us the chance.”

“I can’t. We all agreed you needed to be detoxed first,” Alex said and refused to look at Maggie.

“ALEX! You are only listening to the lab results. You don’t even know who I am,” Maggie shouted. “I’m not the same woman I was when you last saw me. Alex, I’m fighting for a chance to be free. Surely, you can understand that. I want to raise my girls outside of the walls that confine them. I want to be able to give them a near normal life. Please, give us the chance to try. Fail or succeed. Please let me try,” Maggie pleaded her eyes full of tears that had not spilled down her face yet.

Alex started to apologize, but at that moment she couldn’t remember what for, and she couldn’t form a coherent sentence. Looking at Maggie and how steadfast she was standing before her, Alex relented much to her own surprise.

“Fine. But we must be able to monitor you. Anytime. We can put you in a halfway house. The DEO has several available, but I must know everything that’s going on with you and your children,” Alex said and sounded defeated.  
With a renewed spark in her eyes, Maggie shook her head, “Great! Kara and I have been talking about ways to mitigate the changes to my body. She knows what this is like and can help me with”  
Alex interrupted, “You’ve spoken to Kara about what you are going through?”

“Yes, she asked,” Maggie said matter-of-factly.

“Fine. I’ll be in touch,” Alex said and stormed out of the room. She refused to cry in front of Maggie because her sister, always the perfect one, got her ex-fiance to confide in her.

Alex went to the nurse station and ordered a new round of lab work for the entire Sawyer family. They weren’t leaving without a full workup, at least Alex could study the lab results and understand that. Why Maggie had confided in Kara was beyond Alex, but she would figure out a way around it.


	19. Moving on, Moving out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read my crazy story. I do appreciate your interest. And yes, it's about to get a lot more interesting. Some of you will get exactly what you predicted while others will be left thinking what just happened. Hold on it's a wild ride.

It has been so long since Maggie felt powerful and in control that the afternoon’s events left her stunned.  
She walked out of the conference room without noticing how she exactly got out and through the maze of the DEO’s hallways.

She had won their freedom. She should be ecstatic.

But instead, Maggie Sawyer was terrified. Again.

How could she do this? How could she start all over again? How could she possibly do it with two children, who relied completely on her?

Maggie had never felt such pressure.

She stepped into the DEO elevator to ride up to her room, petrified. She didn’t know what should scare her more, riding up to tell her girls that they were truly free or the ride down to their freedom.

A nurse, their nurse, Jackie, who had been so friendly to Maggie and her girls, stopped her in the hallway.

“Director Danvers has ordered a round of bloodwork and tests for you and the girls,” Jackie said. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I know you wanted to keep them from being stuck again, but we must do this to fulfill the order.”

Waving her hand in front of them, Maggie sighed and said “It’s ok. This is a means to an end for a change.”

Smiling a thousand-watt smile to Maggie, Jackie looked up and said, “Well, OK. As soon as the girls are awake let me know and we can get this over with.” She squeezed Maggie’s bicep as she walked away.

Maggie stepped into her room and saw the girls sleeping peacefully. She smiled and giggled to herself. They would be free soon. All Maggie could do was stand at the bedside and stare at the girls. Her view was clouded by the freedom and how sweet it would be.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Maggie didn’t know what to do first, but she decided to get their bloodwork done. She roused the girls up after they’d slept for more than an hour. She gave them juice boxes, raisins and orange slices as snacks. She figured they needed the extras to prepare for whatever Director Danvers had planned for their blood tests.

She told the girls they needed another test. Crocodile tears immediately began to form in Addison’s eyes as she vividly remembered the last test where it hurt when the needle poked her. But Avery, looked every bit like a miniature NCPD Detective Maggie Sawyer stood and said, “We go, Mama. Get tests.”

Maggie laughed at the differences in her daughters and took Avery’s hand as she picked up Addison, who began to cry.

“Let’s get this over with because afterward, I have a big surprise,” Maggie said, smiling.

The Sawyer family walked to the nurse’s station and told Jackie they were ready for their tests. She immediately whisked them to the lab and began the blood draws.

Alex watched the activities on her video screens through bleary eyes from her office. She had trained her computer’s surveillance cameras on the hallway and rooms that the Sawyer family frequented. Alex then reached into her desk and found the flask she had refilled that morning and brought to work. She needed a stiff drink to watch this change.

Maggie Sawyer had a confident step that Alex had memorized years ago. It was one of the things that had pulled Alex in and kept her coming back for more because a confident Maggie Sawyer was someone to be reckoned with.

And here she was walking the halls of the DEO with two identical tiny clones with that same walk, or at least when Addison was permitted to waddle down the hall.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The depression in Alex’s heart must’ve alerted Kara to something being wrong and soon Supergirl flew into Alex’s office like a fighter jet looking for a target.

“Alex, what’s up?” Kara said slightly out of breath and slowing to a stop before she crashed into Alex’s beautiful glass desk. “Have you had lunch? I could get us something.”

Kara asked the latter just to humor her sister because she would often forget to eat, but Kara had already had brunch and lunch. Though, she could go for a snack before dinner.

“Let me go get something from that food truck you like in Chicago,” Kara said and turned on her heel, not allowing Alex to answer because Kara had seen what Alex was watching on her computer screens and knew the elder Danvers needed something extra today, obviously.

Less than five minutes later Kara returned with their food and sat across from Alex as she unwrapped her sandwich.

“Why?” Alex said and stared at Kara. “Why would you help Maggie and not tell me anything about her? Kara, I thought we were beyond keeping secrets. I thought you would have told me about this. Instead, I heard from Maggie today that you have been helping her.”

Stunned and with a mouthful of fresh Philly cheesesteak, Kara chewed and tilted her head to Alex, which made Alex furious because the head tilt was a signature Maggie Sawyer move.

“Look, Don’t. Just don’t include me in any bonding time you have with her. I don’t need to know anything other than if she’s a danger to society or herself or those girls. I don’t really care anymore, OK. Are we clear? I mean, I have Emma. I’m good,” Alex said and nearly shouted at the end. She got up, grabbing her food and stormed out of her own office.

Kara sat stunned for a moment. She continued to eat her cheesesteak, but she knew she was walking a fine line with her sister.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“Take what you have got and do the best you can,” those words were seared into Maggie Sawyer’s brain from her aunt and the years she spent trying to just get by until she could get out. But they were exactly what came into her mind when she thought about leaving the safety of the DEO.

“Take what you have got and do the best you can.”

But Maggie Sawyer and children didn’t have anything. The last time Maggie Sawyer was a free adult she was sleeping on Nettles couch and planning to disappear for a few moments.

She didn’t need a car. Public transportation was fine. It wouldn’t be that big of an inconvenience.

She’d done it in college and not worried. What was 15 years later.

Adapting.

It was all about adapting.

These moments would be inconsequential in the long run, she knew. Growing pains.

They’d find a rhythm to this new life.

But how would Maggie Sawyer support herself and her two children? That was the biggest question in her mind. She was a great detective in her time, but now, too many years has passed and times had changed.

What would she do?

Maggie Sawyer was petrified of her new freedom.

It all happened too quickly for Maggie’s likening. One moment they were standing inside the security office of the DEO and the next they were on the cusp of the exit while J’onn Jozz gave her directions about how to access her new bank account and debit card. She didn’t remember any of it. Luckily, they gave printed instructions.

Signatures at least a dozen times, several photographs or glorified mugshots of her and girls as well as fingerprints were all required. 

Maggie felt more like she was getting booked into freedom than released to her new normal.

But the next thing she remembered was turning and looking at the inside a black DEO SUV with her children strapped in the backseat in car seats. Maggie, herself, was strapped into the front passenger seat.

She had a reminiscent moment of when they all arrived at the DEO.

It was a rainy Thursday afternoon. The windshield wipers continued in a rhythm that Maggie didn’t keep track of. They continued until they got to the nondescript brownstone complex.

Maggie didn’t think about the smile she had when she turned to unbuckle her daughters. Their pretty faces replaced anything she was missing. Their excitement to being outside made them the only happiness Maggie needed.

The moment was frozen when Avery stopped and looked to the sky. Having never seen rain before the toddler was amazed.

The family then paused, along with the two DEO agents sent to settle the family into their new living arrangements. Maggie bent down to Avery and asked what she was thinking.

“What is it?” the girl asked looking wide-eyed at the rain puddling in her outstretched little hand.

“Oh baby, it’s rain. Just rain,” Maggie said and wiped a streak of water from her daughter’s face. Addison, as if on cue, looked up opened her mouth and caught the rain drops. She then squealed and clapped in her mother’s arms and looked at Avery and Maggie with a huge grin, dimples in full effect.

Maggie began to laugh and soon Avery did too. The entire family danced in the rain. The DEO agents also laughed and stood to the side allowing them the moment. One may, or may not have secretly activated a DEO body worn camera to preserve the entire event and stream it back to the DEO.

Receiving the alert that a BWC was activated during Maggie’s transfer, J’onn immediately pulled up the feed and readied a group of agents to dispatch to her aid. But when he saw the first 30 seconds of footage, he called off the assistance and ordered them back to their regular duties.

Then, J’onn sat and just watched the family have fun in the rain. As soon as the feed ended, he was out the door.  
It was the most carefree he had seen Maggie Sawyer since she had been rescued.

That feed had also been on the main screen in Alex Danvers office. She sobbed watching the moment.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After being fully soaked, Maggie decided the girls had enough of new adventures in the rain. She ordered the girls inside the building.

With her heart pounding, Maggie fished the key from her pocket and turned it in the lock to their new home. The DEO agents had grabbed the food supplies they were sent with from the rear of the large SUV and followed them into the apartment.

Maggie left the key in the door without realizing she had because it had been so long since she’d unlocked a door. The room was filled with everything they could possibly need.

Soon after they entered, J’onn had brought the key in and left it on the counter. He stood and smiled as the girls, Avery mostly, explored the new tiny apartment. Their home.

The apartment was not big, but not small in the same sense. Seeing a door off the dining room, Maggie knew that was the master bedroom, because there was a hallway with three other closed doors.

It was all happiness to Maggie. This was a new life. This wouldn’t beautiful, but she would be fine. She was ready for the ride. This was right where she needed to be with her girls.

“I’ll leave you to it, but know I’m always just a call away,” J’onn said and smiled as he retreated out the front door while the little family began to dry off and change out of the wet rain clothes.

Before she knew it, they were alone.

Maggie gasp.

She turned around in the living room/dining room/kitchen with her face up and remembering what it was like just mere months ago when she was confined to a small concrete room. The girls pounced on a pile of toys left for them in the corner. Avery decided she knew what would happen with all of them so she grabbed as many as her little hands could hold and trotted to her mother.

“Here,” Avery said handing toys up to Maggie. Addison tried but failed. Her legs were just starting to move on her command and she couldn’t carry nearly as many toys as Avery could in her coordinated hands.

Maggie dropped to the floor and she grabbed some of the toys and began to play with her daughters in their very first apartment.

They stayed that way for more than an hour, just playing and living.

Soon, it was time for food, baths and normal routine in their new house and Maggie couldn’t be happier about it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Checking the math in her head, Alex knew she had to be careful not to give away herself to those around her, especially Kara and Emma. But she was watching the time and measuring the moments until she thought Maggie Sawyer would lose herself.

It should happen on Sunday.

Today, now.

But nothing alerted Alex to anything out of the ordinary. She smiled on cue when Emma looked up and laughed, but Alex knew she was just biding her time until her phone alerted her that Maggie was not herself. She wouldn’t blame her. She had tried to tell her.

Alex knew she had let Maggie go. Willingly. Freely.

She didn’t know what would have happened, but this was not what she predicted.

She figured by midday Sunday, Maggie’s body would be out of control and something would happen so Alex checked every email and DEO alert waiting for the notice of Maggie’s change.

But nothing happened.

Alex thought how could she miscalculate so terribly?

Kara never looked up as if anything was amiss. Alex surmised that Kara would know before anyone, super hearing and all, but nothing ever happened. For the entire day.

How? Alex thought. Could she have predicted such an error?

They had their family day on Sunday and then Kara went home. Emma went to finish some last-minute emails before her work week started. While Alex was left lounging on their expansive black leather couch with just her thoughts and regrets.

Alex’s mind was miles across town at the Brownstone apartment where a tiny former detective and her two little girls were dancing in their living room for the first time to the children’s nursery rhyme of the “Wheels on the Bus.”

The Sawyers had spent the weekend eating greasy pizza, playing the park and dancing to new songs, child appropriate of course. Little did Alex know, they’d also been entertained every morning by Supergirl with a new song or dance, and then breakfast.

Kara, once home, reflected on her week with Maggie and the girls. How could she bring it up to Alex that she’d spent so much time with Maggie?

This was going to be complicated and messy, Kara and Alex thought separately.


	20. The punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then, Maggie cried.
> 
> Kara watched for a moment before Maggie turned her back to her, walked toward the window and wrapped her arms around her stomach. Taking the hint, Kara ushered Avery down the hall to show her something in her room, while she picked Addison up and sat her on her shoulders.
> 
> The small former detective sobbed alone in her kitchen.

It had taken a few days to adjust, but now Maggie Sawyer and family were settling into their new life.

Maggie had got the girls outside to the nearby parks as much as she could because they were no longer tethered to some dungeon or secret black ops federal government building that required them to get their daylight when it shone for four hours a day over the concrete walls. They spent hours of the day playing on playgrounds, exploring the city and learning new things.

Maggie marveled how everything had changed, but stayed the same in her city.

Avery and Addison loved the swings. Avery also loved the slides, but Addison was so terrified to let go of her mother to go alone.

Avery was in awe of her new world. Addison, though, not as vocal, was taking it all in and more. She was the more observant of the duo and it would take years before Maggie would understand how valuable these moments were to the little girl.

They would watch people while eating ice cream. Walk to the waterfront and Maggie allowed the girls to investigate their curiosities.

But after a week, Maggie grew restless.

She was ready to get a job. Provide a real life for her girls and not rely on the secret government agency to give her handouts. But what could Maggie Sawyer do after being held captive for so many years?

Kara stopped in as Supergirl for the third morning in a row with Noonan’s sticky buns and coffee for Maggie.

The duo had developed an easy relationship and early morning routine.

How could life be so easy at this moment, but yet knock her down and break her heart so many times before? Maggie thought watching her girls devour the sticky buns while Kara entertained her them with her latest antics.

“So, Kara, I want to get a job,” Maggie said, her voice timid and her hands fidgeting.

Blue eyes went wide while zooming a truck over the head of a half-talking, half-mumbling Addison.

“You want to get a job?” Kara asked as she allowed Addison to capture the car before she grabbed Avery who had run in from her room and jumped at the superhero holding a replica Supergirl doll.

“Yes, I do,” Maggie said and straightened her shoulders. “Do you think J’onn would allow it yet?”

“I. I. I don’t know,” Kara said finally standing to her full height. The girls went to playing alone as Kara walked to the kitchen area to look at Maggie.

“I just feel so inadequate and want to do something so my girls know that they must work at this life,” Maggie said and her voice quivered at the end.

“Oh Maggie,” Kara said as she made her way around the island bar that separated them. “You don’t have to do anything to prove yourself to them or to you right now. I think you need to take more time. They need their mother with them more than they need her working somewhere and being put in daycare.”

“Oh God! I never even thought about daycare. How can I even be their mother?” Maggie said before a loud sob escaped her chest. Her hand waved up in front of her between her and Kara. “I’m sorry. I just feel like I’m hardly living, what with taking everything from the DEO and not actually providing anything. I want to be a good provider to my girls, a good example. But fuck, what kind of example forgets the basics like their daily care? I’m terrible.”

Then, Maggie cried.

Kara watched for a moment before Maggie turned her back to her, walked toward the window and wrapped her arms around her stomach. Taking the hint, Kara ushered Avery down the hall to show her something in her room, while she picked Addison up and sat her on her shoulders.

The small former detective sobbed alone in her kitchen.

Kara spent the next hour in Avery’s bedroom playing Legos with the girls. They built two dinosaurs and Kara added the sound effects as well as flying the girls up and down. They had a blast.

Addison wore herself out that morning and started to get cranky. So, Kara took her to her bedroom, next door to Avery, and put her to bed for a nap. It wasn’t until she returned a few minutes later, that Avery told Kara that Addison was just hungry as to why she was cranky.

It only took 20 minutes of napping for them to confirm that when Addison came toddling into the room saying she was “hungy.”

By now, Kara and the girls found Maggie asleep on the oversized sofa. Kara motioned to them to be quiet, as she opened the fridge and pantry. She began to whip up an early lunch for the family.

Within 20 minutes, Kara had a healthy lunch for the girls that she had plated and sat them at the table. Then she walked over to wake Maggie. Sitting on the coffee table and pushing the smaller woman’s shoulder, Kara thought she’d wake right up.

Maggie did, wake right up. But she also delivered a strong right hook to the superhero. Knocking her back for a moment and stunned.

On her feet and realizing what she had done, Maggie began to pick Kara back to a sitting position and apologize profusely. She also ran to the fridge to get ice. Both girls sat speechless until their mother reached the refrigerator and then resumed their lunches.

“Look, I’m fine,” Kara said as she stood walked to the kitchen island. “Please sit down and eat. I made you lunch. A vegan wrap with broccoli on the side.”

“Kara, I am so sorry,” Maggie said with an ice pack in her hand. “I can’t possibly eat now. Thank you though.”

“Maggie, look I know you’re having a tough time and you know I’m always here for you, but just eat your lunch and enjoy your day or the next few days you have with your girls. Don’t be rushing into anything. No one is forcing you to do that. You aren’t on some timetable or schedule. Don’t try to figure it out just yet.”

Maggie shook her head, her shoulders fell and she shuffled to the table. Sitting down and to eat her lunch. Kara walked over and bid her goodbyes and then flew away from the balcony.

“You K, momma?” Avery said.

“Yes, baby, I’m fine. I was just tired,” Maggie said to her daughter.

“We all take a nap today. Me too,” Avery said with her eyes bright and big to her mother.

“Yes, baby. We all will take a nap today,” Maggie said and laughed a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for continuing to follow my journey with these characters. I never know where we will go until I sit down at the computer and your support means all the world.   
> I apologize I don't have regular updates, but real life gets in the way of that more often than not. But thank you for sticking with this story, for your kudos, comments and thoughts!


	21. After the punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie stretched her hand out in front of her and flexed her fingers. Not even a bruise marred her olive skin. She knew that she should have at least broken several bones by punching the Girl of Steel, yet nothing was amiss on her hand.

Rubbing her chin, Kara flew into her apartment. She didn’t realize what kind of right hook Maggie really had until she felt it personally. The woman was stronger than Kara realized. She’d need to report it, as she had been asked to by J’onn. But Kara thought does the DEO really need to know that Maggie could be as strong as Supergirl?

Kara debated that information while got ready for her evening shift at Catco.

Across town, Maggie and her girls had just laid down for their afternoon naps. They settled in, each under a blanket that was a gift from DEO workers. 

Maggie thought back to the moment she punched Kara on accident. She had spent so much time protecting herself and then Avery and finally Addison that Maggie never hesitated to keep them safe. She acted on impulse and punched Kara, and Maggie noticed she made a difference in the Superhero’s face. 

Maggie stretched her hand out in front of her and flexed her fingers. Not even a bruise marred her olive skin. She knew that she should have at least broken several bones by punching the Girl of Steel, yet nothing was amiss on her hand.

Should she ignore the hurt she caused? That was what Kara had implied when she when she said she was fine. Or should she own up to her strength and allow Kara and the others to examine her for this new-found force?

Maggie tossed and turned during the nap. She tried to close her eyes, but every time she saw her fist connecting with Kara’s cheek and the Superhero grabbing it as the force pushed her back on the coffee table as a result. The girls settled down and slept, but Maggie eventually got up and started cleaning up from their lunch.

Hovering over her phone, Maggie contemplating sending an apology text to Kara about the punch, but she never found the right words. And soon the girls woke up. Afterward, it was all about them and getting them tired out before their dinner then bedtime.

Before Maggie knew what happened, she was fast to sleep in her bed with her clothes on, which was a regular occurrence, after putting the girls down. They all slept well until morning’s first light.

They never knew that Supergirl hovered above their building for much of the evening just watching and keeping an eye to make sure they were all OK after their morning. Once Maggie went down in her own bed, even with her clothes on, Kara felt confident to fly away and check on the other people she regularly monitored.

Those included Alex Danvers, who was actually home for a change and with her girlfriend. They were watching some streaming show they had missed while Alex had been away at the DEO. Emma was snuggled into Alex’s side. Alex held her protectively, but her body was ridged like it hadn’t been before Maggie’s return.

Emma and Kara didn’t know that Alex sat there wondering what Maggie and her children were doing across town. They didn’t know what it was like to always wonder what another person and her children were doing at all times. 

It could consume her life, but Alex decided it would end when she visited them on the coming Tuesday morning.

No one knew that visit was planned in her head, least of all Alex, but it would happen like clockwork and she would revel in it, take a look around like a mission she’d been assigned to for DEO survival.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

But in the meantime, Nettles stopped by to see how Maggie and the girls were settling into their life outside walls.

Of course, he brought more gifts, but he also brought something Maggie never dreamed.

“Look Mags, if you interested, I’ve spoken to a couple people and they’d love to have you back. That is if you are willing. I know you’ve been through a lot and no one is rushing you. But I want you to know that there’s interest in your coming back. Helping,” Nettles said feet planted firmly, the cup of coffee held tightly in his hand standing in the smaller woman’s kitchen. 

Maggie audibly and visibly gasps at the statement. She put her hand up and cupped her mouth. Then she looked to her girls, happily playing in the living room with their new toys.

Holding his hand up as a stop, “Of course, this is offer is not for a while. Everyone wants you to settle back into a normal life and create something normal for your girls. We are thinking at least six months from now, if not a year. And before you ask, I’ve talked to J’onn at the DEO and they agree.”

Tears forming in her eyes Maggie looked at Nettles and said, “I don’t know what to say. Well, I do. Thank you. Thank you for believing in me and that I can come back. I said earlier this week I thought I needed a job. To go and do something. To show them I could provide.”

“Wait, don’t jump into this Maggie. This is about you getting yourself and those precious gifts settled before you even consider coming back. I just mentioned it because I want you to know that there are options for you out there. We want you back. You were one of the best detectives I’ve ever seen. The way you read people is unmatched,” Nettles said.

“Yeah, but do you think I could get back to that?” Maggie said, doubt seeping into her voice. “It’s been a long time and a lot has happened. Netty, I’m not the same person I was then. I have a lot more to think about these days.” 

“Whenever you are ready to even try, and like I said months from now, we will see,” Nettles said.

The duo continued with their coffee and fell into a comforting routine they’d developed at the DEO.

Maggie confided some of her fears about being out on her own and how the girls were adjusting. More importantly, she told of how she was adjusting or lack thereof and about punching Supergirl. Nettles gave her some advice and they ended with promises of a dinner by midweek.

Maggie closed the door behind him and sighed thinking her life was finally on the upswing and she’d found her remedy to so many tragedies. Then she turned to put her children in the bath and to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters so close, but I've been off of work lately, so it's given me time to write. Thank you for reading!


	22. Alex confronts Maggie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I. Um. I came by to see how you were doing. How the girls were doing. Now. Now, that you were here,” Alex stumbled but motioned overeagerly with her hands to the apartment.
> 
> Folding her arms over her stomach, Maggie answered, “We are good. Thank you.”
> 
> “Ok. Ok. Good. That’s good news. You’ve been feeling good, right?” Alex said continuing like it was her first conversation ever and waved her hands in front of her like that would make up for this awkwardness. 
> 
> “Yes, I’ve been fine. The girls as well,” Maggie said.
> 
> “Ok. Good. I. I just came by to check on you all,” Alex said and stuttered again.

It was a week and a day before Alex Danvers showed up at Maggie Sawyer’s apartment door.

She paced outside for seven full minutes before she finally got the courage to knock on the door.

Like a piercing guitar riff Maggie heard every step, all the twists and the turns, but she continued to sing to her girls as they went down for their afternoon naps. Since her breakdown, Avery had been more agreeable to her afternoon naps.

Maggie had gotten the girls to sleep, closed the door and went to her kitchen before she heard Alex approach the door for the final time. Maggie met Alex before her hand could strike the door for a second time.

Maggie had decided she was going to confront the storm, so she met Alex in the entry. Stunned, Alex held her hand in the air and her eyes were wide when Maggie swung the door open wide right after the first knock. 

Maggie decided nothing would disturb her girls during their nap, so she gave Alex her infamous raised eyebrow.

“Hi. I just put the girls down for their nap. I didn’t want you to wake them,” Maggie said holding the door to the apartment. She thought Alex would take the hint and walk in, but she stood in the doorway stunned.

“Do you want to come in? Or I mean, I can come outside,” Maggie said.

“Ah. No. I can come in. Unless. Unless you don’t want me to. Then you can come out here. Sure,” Alex said stumbling over her words.

“Ok,” Maggie said and stepped outside pulling the door closed behind her. She didn’t need the door open to hear her girls if they woke. And Maggie really wanted them to sleep today. She didn’t want any interruptions.

Alex took six steps backward and neared the hallway wall. Fidgeting with her hands, she watched Maggie.

“I. Um. I came by to see how you were doing. How the girls were doing. Now. Now, that you were here,” Alex stumbled but motioned overeagerly with her hands to the apartment.

Folding her arms over her stomach, Maggie answered, “We are good. Thank you.”

“Ok. Ok. Good. That’s good news. You’ve been feeling good, right?” Alex said continuing like it was her first conversation ever and waved her hands in front of her like that would make up for this awkwardness. 

“Yes, I’ve been fine. The girls as well,” Maggie said.

“Ok. Good. I. I just came by to check on you all,” Alex said and stuttered again.

Realizing that they would get nowhere with Alex leading the conversation, Maggie squared her shoulders and faced Alex before she said, “We are really good Alex. What exactly is it that brings you by to see me? We are healthy and reporting in daily with J’onn and Supergirl.”

“Daily with J’onn and Supergirl?” Alex asked shocked and surprised. But then she shook her head, squared her shoulders toward the smaller woman and continued, “Look, I just wanted to see how you were doing and if you need anything. I mean I thought you would have needed more help by now since your senses should have been out of control at this point. Are they? Are they out of control?”

Laughing a bit, bringing her hand to her face, Maggie said, “No, I’m good with all of that. Thank you though. Kara has helped more than I could’ve imagined. No worries here.”

“What?” Alex said. “Kara has helped you get your senses under control? What about your powers? Did they develop into something more?”

“Ah, yes. They did. And she has helped there too,” Maggie said straightening to be as tall as she could stretch her small frame. “Is there a problem with that, Danvers?”

Catching Alex off guard, she gathers herself as best as she could and replied, “No. No, that’s fine. I’m glad she’s there for you. I wasn’t aware. But I’m happy for you that you’ve figured it out. I thought you would have needed more help by now. That you wouldn’t be managing as well. But I guess like everything I was wrong.”

“Good. I didn’t want you to go back berating Kara for helping me. I assumed she had told you by now. Right?” Maggie said and tilted her head in that way that always made Alex melt. It was then that Alex noticed Maggie’s small frame dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt with short sleeves hugging the woman in the right ways.

“Ah, yeah, she did, but I didn’t realize the extent. You’re are good then?” Alex said stuffing her hands in her jean pockets. “You are alright?”

“Oh, yes. I’m good. More than good, actually,” Maggie said with the head tilt and slight dimple smile.

“Ok. Good. Good. Well, I won’t keep you. Look call if you need anything,” Alex said before taking off to the stairs.

“Wait, Alex,” Maggie said.

But just like that Alex was gone. Taking two stairs at a time until she reached the front door.

She heard Maggie speaking to her behind her, but it was muffled in comparison to the blood rushing from her veins to her head and how the heat flushed into her face. She knew she couldn’t keep her eye contact with that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

Alex had to escape from Maggie standing in front of her. Alex had to escape from Maggie Sawyer in general now. She couldn’t split the woman before her with the woman who had tears in her eyes as she left their apartment that day saying “See you around, Danvers.” 

They were the same women, there was no difference but for the children who were in Maggie’s spotlight and out of Alex’s view. The lines on Maggie’s face had thinned, but they had not muted her beauty. Burned into Alex’s brain was the side of her face as Maggie looked down before she squared her shoulders and readied herself for whatever Alex had come for that day.

She was silent for most of their interactions, but Alex’s soul was on fire as if someone had stoked the blaze she had for Maggie so many years ago. She wanted to burn anything down that threatened the smaller woman and those miniature Maggie Sawyers.

It was like they had never left each other, only pushed a pause button for those years apart and now those years seemed like only a moment. 

Alex didn’t know how to handle all these emotions.

She was all but a married woman with Emma, and Maggie was someone that Emma was not such a fan of because of their history. How would she explain all these thoughts? How would she explain all those feelings and urges?

Was it just her point of view of always wanting to protect Maggie and keep her safe from the world that had hurt so badly so early on? And now, how much trauma had she really endured? 

Alex didn’t have the time to sort these emotions and thoughts. She was so tangled up in Maggie and her children she felt like she was forcing herself to agree to stay away.

But Alex didn’t get much time because appearing out of nowhere was Maggie. She had raced Alex to the landing of the apartment at the front door and won for all intents and purposes.

“Look, I know we didn’t start off on the best because you probably didn’t know how to handle your ex-fiancée being kidnapped, tortured, impregnated and then found, but look can we just start over and be friends, Alex?” Maggie said in one stream of breath. Her chest heaved heavy and she sucked in as much air as she could after such a confession.

Nodding, Alex couldn’t speak.

Maggie Sawyer continued to amaze Alex at the strength this woman held even now, today, in the face of this awkwardness. But realizing she had not verbally said anything, Alex jumped and shouted, “YES. YES. I’D LIKE THAT.”

Smiling, Maggie knew she had her in. “Ok. Good. So maybe we can do a lunch or dinner, adults only.”

“YES. YES,” realizing she was still shouting Alex took her voice down a few notches. “I’d like that.”

Smiling back at her, Maggie said, “I’d like that. Let me know when you might be free because you have the schedule. I just have feedings and naps. And look bring Emma if you want. I’d like to meet her.”

The warmth in Alex’s chest evaporated with those last nine words. And it showed. But Alex pressed on. 

“Sure. I’ll call you and set something up ahead of time,” Alex said and backed out of the apartment complex door. She had to get out of this building and away from Maggie Sawyer.

Looking back at the closed door, Alex swore she heard Maggie saying they’d meet again real soon.

Before she could think too much about the interaction and seeing Maggie again, Alex had waved the DEO card in front of the dark metal door that keeps random people out of the stairwell, and the door swung open. Alex bolted onto the sidewalk and suck air into her lungs, pausing momentarily to put her hands on her knees at the bottom of the stairs to the doorway.

Alex then sprinted to the DEO black SUV, just in case Maggie continued to watch her out the window. Jumping into the driver’s seat and once encased inside the blackened-out windows of the SUV, Alex broke down with a shaky breath followed by a couple hard pounding fists to the steering wheel.

She was so angry, but what else could she say to that woman? She didn’t know what to say to begin with, but damn now she felt like a school teacher checking on the student in the principal’s office, who had taken all the punishment for her best friend.

That bourbon on the shelf at her apartment sounded like the best solution right now, but Alex hadn’t been drunk in her apartment in a good year, at least. The less Emma knew the better Alex figured on her drinking.

Now, looking down from her kitchen window, Maggie picked out the DEO SUV quickly. Though she could easily see inside the darkened windows if she tried, she didn’t. She guessed it contained Alex. It sat there for longer than expected.

Standing perfectly still, Maggie watched and honed her senses. She heard the erratic heartbeats. She assumed it was Alex’s. But she couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t studied the woman’s heartbeat in years and never like this.

Closing her eyes, regret filled her chest as she heard the sob from Alex as she beat the steering wheel with her open fist. Maggie never wanted Alex to feel so much for her now. She knew the woman had another waiting at home.

She never planned to steal anything from the unknown woman. It was wrong on so many levels for Maggie, or so she thought.

Maggie withdrew into herself and walked back toward the couch. She sat in silence, thinking about the moments with Alex as she kept an ear on her sleeping children. Maggie didn’t hear the sobs that continued from the SUV or as Alex drove away. She couldn’t focus on anything about Alex now that she had looked her in the eyes and talked to the woman. All the while pretending there interaction was all normal and comfortable.

Maggie knew Alex was happy with her current relationship and she couldn’t do anything to disrupt that no matter how much she wanted to grab her, kiss her and invite her into the apartment and home she had created with her children. To feel the safety and security of the woman who once allowed her to dream of a future with another person.

Wait, that was not the sane thing Maggie Sawyer as a mother was supposed to think with her children being the one thing, she thought of more than any other.

Maggie stumbled to the couch and grabbed her head. So many thoughts swirling in her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you for continuing to read and follow me on this journey of what happens next. I've posted all my advance chapters, so now it's where the muses lead me as to what happens. 
> 
> Many of you asked is this Maggie/Alex or Maggie/Kara. I honestly don't know. One week I think it's one and then I keep writing and the other surfaces.
> 
> When I know, you will know.
> 
> Thank you for your patience with this story and keeping me on my toes with your questions! I appreciate each and everyone one of you!


	23. Burning it down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex spent so much time trying to get over and around Maggie and then her vanishing act and suspected disappearance that Alex didn’t think how much she just missed the other woman being in her life. She had hardened her life to stand by the mistake she made all those years ago letting Maggie go, telling her they wouldn’t ever work. They wanted different things.
> 
> Today, the way they squared up to each other, the challenging look in Maggie’s eyes, the strength the smaller woman seemed to summon were all things Alex had missed. She’d rarely been challenged as Maggie questioned her on her beliefs and views of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your continued support of this story.
> 
> My wife is a big help for allowing me time to spend writing this, and she has no idea about this story.

Driving away with tears in her eyes, Alex decided she needed a night to herself.

She texted Emma to say she would be away and not to worry. Then, she went to a nearby liquor store and purchased a bottle that Maggie once loved before she drove to a hotel that was technically in the same neighborhood as Maggie’s and got a room.

Throwing the royal blue plastic keycard that held so many similarities to Supergirl’s suit to the nightstand, Alex sighed and thought she couldn’t escape any of her life in this city. Pulling the cork from the bottle, Alex turned it up and guzzled. 

The burn choked her. She spit some of the scotch out as she coughed until her lungs burned. That didn’t count the burn in her throat.

All she could see was Maggie’s pretty face smiling, head tilting in that familiar way and the way it felt like she could see right through Alex’s soul. Like she always had been able to do in the past.

Alex cried again. She slid down the bed and stretched her legs to touch the adjacent bed while she sobbed. The bottle firmly gripped in her left hand. Visions of Maggie and her children danced in Alex’s mind, her memory of those moments strong.

This would be the last time she lost her cool over this woman, Alex thought as she drank another large gulp. The burn setting her body to a warmth she hadn’t felt in years. 

It didn’t take long for the alcohol’s effect to clutch her body and the emotions became softer. Alex’s cries became less and before she knew what was happening, she was laughing at herself.

A drunken laugh. 

It filled the hotel room.

Her head thrown back, staring at the once white popcorn stucco ceiling like she’d never realized before how much she missed Maggie Sawyer.

It was a revelation in fact. 

Alex spent so much time trying to get over and around Maggie and then her vanishing act and suspected disappearance that Alex didn’t think how much she just missed the other woman being in her life. She had hardened her life to stand by the mistake she made all those years ago letting Maggie go, telling her they wouldn’t ever work. They wanted different things.

Today, the way they squared up to each other, the challenging look in Maggie’s eyes, the strength the smaller woman seemed to summon were all things Alex had missed. She’d rarely been challenged as Maggie questioned her on her beliefs and views of the world.

Alex continued to drink, but she also realized she had to make amends. 

It wasn’t Kara’s fault that she didn’t have a relationship with Maggie now. It was her own. She had failed at recognizing Maggie just needed support when she was rescued. That the world was new again for Maggie who was learning to navigate her new normal.

Alex had botched this reconnection just as she had done with every discovery she had with Maggie, she thought and laughed at herself. 

“It’s not a surprise, Alex,” she drunkenly said to herself. “You did this when you realized you were gay and she rejected you. You did this when she said she didn’t want everything as exactly as you had dreamed. You are doing it again. Stop. Stop. Stop.”

Then she berated herself for allowing Maggie to suffer through the torture she had endured during her kidnapping and captivity. How could anyone of Alex’s training and expertise allow for a woman she once loved more than herself to endure such agony.

“Alex, how could you let her be done so wrong? How could you get so far from what you were taught? Protect. Protect. Oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all that happened to you against your will. I was so weak and stupid to just write you off. I’m. I’m. I’m so sorry,” Alex slurred against her sleeve as she sobbed. “Maggie you were the best parts of me. So many things are not me now. I don’t even know who I am most days.”

That was the last coherent thought Alex remembered. 

She woke up lying sideways, fully clothed across one of the beds. The taste in her mouth told her she had vomited most of the scotch up during the night.

Well, it was still early. Just before sunrise. 

Feeling like shit warmed over, Alex decided to shower and change clothes before she went home. So, she grabbed her bag from the DEO SUV and stood in the scalding shower of this random hotel room. It was not the best way to handle her emotions, but better than she had done a couple years ago when she would go, get drunk and pick up some random woman for a few hours of memory loss.

What Alex wouldn’t know is that later that night, Maggie Sawyer using her superior hearing would hone in Alex’s heartbeat again. It was a test just to see if she could find it. 

Alex being closer than expected, that was an easy task. The harder part was for Maggie to stay put in her new apartment when Alex was only about two miles away crying and talking to herself about all the mistakes she’d made throughout her life. Those pieces of information were something the old Alex would have never willingly said aloud to anyone, including herself.

Maggie stayed up all night listening. 

She knew she couldn’t leave and go to the woman because she would never leave her daughters. But still, her heart ached at how the redhead continued to beat herself up over things out of her control. Maggie listened until Alex’s breathing evened out and she knew the woman was passed out. Then she allowed herself to crawl into bed and rest her eyes and cry.

Maggie cried herself to sleep quietly as to not wake Avery, who seemed to be on high alert regarding her mother’s emotions lately, which Maggie hated. She didn’t want to put anything on her daughter that was unnecessary and this was not justifiable for the girl to deal with considering all the other things she’d been through in her short life.

Maggie woke with a startle as the sun had peaked into her window. She tuned into the sounds she’d previously heard, but it was silence. She couldn’t pick up Alex’s heartbeat or any other sounds like she did last night. 

Maggie panicked. 

The sun was up and soon her daughters would be awake demanding their morning breakfast.

Maggie paced in her kitchen trying to decide what to do because she feared the worse for Alex.

Just then Kara came bolting in through the fire escape window. A Noonan’s bag in hand and a bright smile on her face as her red cape flowed behind her.

“Kara, have you spoken to Alex this morning?” Maggie said rushing over to the Superhero. 

“No, why is something wrong?” Kara said and sat the bag on the counter. “I haven’t actually talked to her since yesterday morning after I left here.”

“I. Can you? I,” grabbing her forehead Maggie sighed and said. “Look can you stay here with the girls and make sure they get their breakfast?”

“Sure. What’s wrong Maggie?” Kara said looking more like Kara than Supergirl in the outfit.

“I’m sure nothing is wrong. I just need a few minutes. Please,” Maggie said. 

“Ok.” Kara said and nodded.

Before she could ask another question, Maggie was out the door and running down the street as her life depended on it. With super speed, she made it to the hotel in less than a minute. Up the stairs, fearful to wait for the elevator, Maggie was standing outside the room she could smell Alex Danvers from.

She knocked and no one answered.

Taking a step back, Maggie decided now was as good of a time as any to test her eyes, so she looked. At the door at first, then through the door seeing the wood, metal and into the room. It took a moment for her to realize the shapes and really look to understand, but soon she was scanning the entire room. 

She saw the empty bottle of scotch, the wrinkled bed comforter and a discarded towel on the bathroom sink. 

Alex was gone.

Breathing a sigh of relief that from the signs of the room no harm had come to the woman, Maggie decided to listen again for Alex.

After a few minutes of concentrating intently, she found Alex inside an apartment sharing breakfast with another woman, Emma. Realizing what she was hearing, Maggie staggered back against the hallway and decided it was time to go and get back to those people who were her world and who she was supposed to be worried about.

Maggie decided she couldn’t worry about Alex like she once had. She had other responsibilities.

When Maggie returned Kara just smiled up from the floor where she played with the girls and told her there were some breakfast leftovers in the oven if she was interested.

“Thank you, Supergirl,” Maggie said genuinely and smiled as she crossed the room to her kitchen to eat.

Kara never asked, but she understood there was something more to push Maggie to rush out of the apartment that early in the morning.

When the girls went down for their mid-day nap, Kara, who had changed into her Catco clothing and returned with lunch, sat Maggie down on the couch and they talked.

“I didn’t know Alex had come over yesterday. I’m sorry that disrupted your life,” Kara said looking intently at Maggie. She picked up Maggie’s hands as they sat on the couch and squeezed them.

“I know all this has to be so difficult. Coming back to find out how life has moved on and you have two children to boot,” Kara said. “Maggie, I have no idea how you are feeling, but I do have some experience of coming into life without really knowing what’s going on and feeling like you have lost everything. But you haven’t. Trust me when I say that I will always be here for you, no matter what happened to you and Alex. I say that because I know what you’ve been through with all your abilities now.”

“Thank you, Kara. It means a lot to me for you all the help you’ve given me and I hope you will stick around with me and the girls,” Maggie said and laughed. “God knows what will happen if they have the same ‘abilities’ that you and I do when they get older.”

“Maggie, if they do, we will deal with it. Just like I helped you get your senses under control. We shouldn’t pretend that they won’t because if I had to guess I’d guess you were changed to birth those girls. Someone has a bigger plan for you and those babies,” Kara said and took a deep breath. “I will do everything in my powers to keep you and those girls safe and to have a normal life. They deserve that after, well, after everything you all have been through.”

“That means more to me than you will ever know,” Maggie said squeezing Kara’s hand and smiling dimples in full effect.  
Kara had to leave for an interview but promised to check on them later.

Maggie took a nap. She was emotionally exhausted.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Kara showed up at the DEO in her street clothes. She had to talk to Alex and Supergirl wouldn’t do for this chat.

“Alex, what are you doing going to visit Maggie and the girls?” Kara asked as the door to Alex’s office closed behind her.

“Did she tell you I was there? I mean did she mention I stopped by?” Alex said less forceful than her first sentence.

“No. But I knew when I got there this morning with breakfast that you had been there. I could read it in her eyes. She left as soon as I arrived. Did she find you?” Kara said, her head tilted like Maggie’s in a disapproving look.

“No. I didn’t. I never. NO. I didn’t see her this morning. Why would she come after me?” Alex said and sank into the brown worn leather couch in her office. “I saw her yesterday afternoon and then left. I. I left and lost my cool. But she never saw anything.”

“Really?” Kara said her eyebrow raised. “You really think she saw or heard nothing from you?”

“I,” Alex said and her mouth opened and closed several times before she shrugged. “I didn’t think she did. Did she? Hear me? See me?”

“I don’t know Alex,” Kara said. “Where were you? What happened?”

Alex stood before her sister just blankly staring like she didn’t know where to start. So, she just began talking how she feared for Maggie when she left the DEO and continued from there only stopping when she got to the part where she and Emma made love after she got home for breakfast that morning.

Alex decided she had to pour herself into her current relationship. There was no other way to survive to be Maggie Sawyer’s friend, but for the thought, she had to be faithful to a woman waiting at home for her.

And Alex Danvers was always faithful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please continue to come back. I have more coming. Thank you!


	24. Who can turn down Ice Cream at a time like this?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Running her right hand through her hair, a slight warmth filled her body. She regretted the turtleneck she had worn. The warmth about to overtake her outward body and show as perspiration. Maybe it was the situation, maybe it was the company now. Either way, Kara couldn’t tell which had made her overheat.
> 
> Her stomach was trembling. It had been so long, and she slightly recognized the feelings. From the ancient memories she had buried so deeply, she knew what this was, but she would not concede for a while because she couldn’t be afforded such a luxury. The clouds needed to completely clear and show her the world before she would concede that she could love again. But it would never be like it was before when she was younger. She couldn’t make that mistake again.
> 
> Apologizing that she heard an emergency, Kara flew out the window in record time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two days after the last update, here's another.

Maggie’s life continued with her girls. She didn’t pause at all because they demanded her full attention and those girls were always moving forward. It was the nature of having small children. But Maggie didn’t know that. She learned more and more every day. Their normal was forming and Maggie was basking in every moment.

Even though Maggie was apprehensive to hear the full story, it only took a couple days for Kara to breathe what had transpired. She told Maggie what Alex had told her and agreed that she could relay to Maggie after Kara told Alex that the woman searched for her.

Regret filled Maggie for thinking she had caused Alex’s breakdown. But Kara shocked her even more with the next statement as they sipped coffee at the little island in Maggie’s kitchen while the girls watched a cartoon on television. 

“Maggie, I always feel like it’s my fault because Alex has never gotten to be herself. She’s always worrying and looking out for me. Alex doesn’t do things for herself as you got her to,” Kara said the last part barely above a whisper. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Maggie reached out and put her hand on Kara’s arm and squeezed. It drew Kara’s face up from studying the countertop.

Dimples in full effect, Maggie said through her smile, “Kara, you have to let go of that at some point. Alex is Alex. Now and forever. We both have gotten her to do tremendous things. But you can not keep beating yourself up over her and her life.”

“I know. But still, I feel responsible,” Kara said and slowly lifted her head to meet Maggie’s smiling face.

“Alex has done some amazing things when she’s protecting you and also, she has done some great things when she wasn’t and she was just being your sister,” Maggie said with her head tilt and dimples in full effect. “You need to let go and love her. Don’t feel guilty for the things she has chosen lately. It’s not your fault that you think you see fault in Alex’s life. She makes the decisions for herself. She chooses to put other people before her own needs and from what I know she’s always done that.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right. I feel like she’s angry about it sometimes. Or resentful. To me,” Kara said whispering the last sentence. “I wish I could help her not worry.”

“You will never do that,” Maggie said laughing and sipping her coffee. “Trust me, since I’ve had the girls, I will NEVER not worry about them and I think your relationship with Alex is similar since Eliza made her responsible for you when you arrived.”

Kara laughed and covered her mouth. “I think you are correct, but we’ve moved past that protective mother stage a while ago. Alex will always be so much more than anything I can describe what you have here on Earth.”

It was as if saying Alex’s name released something in Kara’s chest because she realized that she’d allowed the girl to steal so much of her world. Kara leaned back on the counter and allowed so much of what Alex had been, was and could be to release from her chest. It was like a ship setting sail and Alex was the only occupant. Kara released so much from her teen and adult years about Alex at that moment.

Kara had never really had anyone she could talk to about some of these things, but Maggie had filled that void as of late. She had shared things with Maggie that she never dared breath about much less talk openly and honestly about with another person. Kara was lost in her thoughts about how so many things had changed for her.

Maggie sensed the change and just allowed Kara to do her thing. She poured another cup of coffee and walked away. She calmed her children, because they seemed to sense Kara’s turmoil and didn’t even make a noise, but looked curiously at the adults.

The trio was quiet for some time before Kara realized that she was still standing in the kitchen, alone.

Running her right hand through her hair, a slight warmth filled her body. She regretted the turtleneck she had worn. The warmth about to overtake her outward body and show as perspiration. Maybe it was the situation, maybe it was the company now. Either way, Kara couldn’t tell which had made her overheat.

Her stomach was trembling. It had been so long, and she slightly recognized the feelings. From the ancient memories she had buried so deeply, she knew what this was, but she would not concede for a while because she couldn’t be afforded such a luxury. The clouds needed to completely clear and show her the world before she would concede that she could love again. But it would never be like it was before when she was younger. She couldn’t make that mistake again.

Apologizing that she heard an emergency, Kara flew out the window in record time.

Maggie was still a detective in her heart and knew the flimsy excuse was weak. But Kara had been such a friend, in fact, the only friend, she could really constantly count on in her new normal. She’d let the Girl of Steel slide. At least this time.

Maggie realized they all were still learning and adjusting to what was normal. Her mostly though.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Her blonde curls waved in the wind while her hips swayed a bit. She never realized how she was such an imposing figure until Maggie pointed out the highlights on the nightly news that evening, while the Superhero and Maggie shared ice cream, both vegan. Of which Kara never complained or really noticed. 

Ice cream was ice cream for the Superhero. And if she had to bet, she’d bet that Maggie wasn’t lactose intolerant any more, but the tiny detective never tried any other to test Kara’s theory. Even though the girls, had tried every flavor available thanks to Kara. 

“How could you fight that white Martian like that without any protection to your mind?” Maggie asked, genuinely curious following the evening television news highlights.

Kara shrugged and smiled, “I never actually stopped to think about it. I just did it.”

Then she smiled and picked at her shirt.

“Kara, you know how crazy that sounds,” Maggie whispered. The girls had been sleeping for a couple hours now and she didn’t want to wake them. “I understand it. Hell, I did it back in the day. When I was reckless. When I was .” 

Maggie stopped and didn’t finish her sentence. But Kara saw it all over her face. She understood that it was from that time when Maggie didn’t think her life mattered anymore.

It was clear at that moment that Maggie had chosen sides. She would always be a mother from now on. She wouldn’t make the stupid mistakes that Kara still made as Supergirl. The stupid mistakes that Alex made sometimes.

They each would never realize how important it was for Maggie to comprehend in one moment that she had two small children to rely on her for every moment forever and how she changed in that moment to save them.

To save herself in the end.

It was like seeing in color for the first time for humans.

But for Maggie and Kara there was so much more involved.

Maggie often sat back against the headboard of her bed and breathed deeply while listening for those people she loved.

Most importantly, her children who had not chosen any of this life to be a part of or involved with. She felt the most regret for them and about them. She didn’t know how to make their lives better but for loving them more than she had felt while growing up. She knew that “in the wink of a young girl’s eye” their childhood would be gone. Hell, most of their life, if she was being honest. And she was so scared of what was planned for them. She had no idea who had set her up and helped her birth them, but she’d be damned if she’s just sat here and wait.  
Maggie vowed she would train her children to be tough, independent, and strong women. They would be fighters and not victims.

Across town, painting to calm her nerves that night, Kara decided a couple of things. She realizes Maggie is the best friend she’s ever had outside of Alex, who she always felt like was more responsible for her than a friend.

Kara decides that it’s time to make Alex more accountable for her own happiness. Alex has been going through the motions and doing what’s expected, but hasn’t truly been happy for a while, according to Kara’s assessment.

Kara also resolves that she’s going to slowly make Alex be more accountable and a friend to Maggie. This riff was going to end. Maggie needs all the friends she can get, and she and Alex always worked no matter their romantic relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your continued support.


	25. Project TAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alex, please let’s talk,” the man said. “Allow me to explain. Please. Give me five minutes.”
> 
> Stunned Alex, nodded and followed his motions to sit back down at her booth. A waitress came over and took Alex’s empty plates, refilled her coffee and sat a new mug in front of the man and filled his cup.

They were the best-laid plans, but nothing ever goes accordingly in the lives of the Danvers’ sister. As the saying goes, they should come with a warning.

It was simple Tuesday morning when Kara flew into Maggie’s kitchen a half hour before the girls would be waking up. The tiny little Maggie Sawyers had settled into their new lives and loved every minute of it. Meanwhile, their mother was still adjusting. She was still in her PJs and staring at the coffee maker as if to will it to brew faster.  
Kara sat the bag of breakfast treats on the counter. She swirled and was in her Kara Danvers outfit for the day’s work at Catco.

“Morning,” Kara said cheerfully. 

Maggie grunted and said “Hi.”

“Rough night?” Kara asked tentatively.

“Yeah,” Maggie said and rubbed her forehead. “I couldn’t sleep and then when I did it wasn’t restful.”

Kara understood that to mean Maggie had flashbacks, nightmares or just terrors about what she had been through. The smaller woman never really confided much other than she relived some of the events and it wasn’t pleasant. 

It wasn’t 30 seconds later, Kara’s comm activated and a red alert for Supergirl’s assistance in the downtown area was requested.

Kara apologized and left. Maggie sipped her first cup of coffee and dug around in the bag Kara had left for her favorite two double toasted bagels and then a blueberry muffin. There were also the favorites of the girls in the bag. She smiled at the treats, knowing they weren’t from a local bakery.

Across town, Alex Danvers had woken to Emma making breakfast but was called away on “official FBI business” before she got to enjoy the omelet and coffee. Emma knew the routine by now, but she hated it as she shoveled Alex’s breakfast in the trash when she cleaned the kitchen. She had begged Alex to at least finish breakfast before running out of the apartment, which she had helped Alex buy as her mortgage broker before they started dating.

The woman decided it was time for the talk about how Alex should rotate out of field assignments and into a more normal job with the FBI. Emma wanted to propose, she wanted a family like Alex had described when she told her of her only other significant relationship. She was ready.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The crazy alien causing havoc downtown was no match for Supergirl, so it was quickly contained. The Danvers’ sisters decided a breakfast meeting was necessary. They both changed clothes and met at a diner in the area where they had contained the disoriented alien, who was searching for his family.

Just as their food was delivered, Kara’s phone lit up with a call from Catco about a change in her plans for the day. The Superhero inhaled her food and apologized profusely as she had to go into work early.

Alex waved her off and decided to savor the quiet and peace of the diner where the only other occupant besides the staff was an older man drinking coffee at the bar and reading the morning newspaper. The bell over the front door rang and a tall slender man with a hat and suit jacket walked inside and removed his sunglasses.

Alex noticed his form, but when he turned toward her she spewed coffee all over the table and stood up reaching for her Glock tucked in the back of her jeans. He crossed the diner in no time and placed a calming hand on her shoulder.

“Alex, please let’s talk,” the man said. “Allow me to explain. Please. Give me five minutes.”

Stunned Alex, nodded and followed his motions to sit back down at her booth. A waitress came over and took Alex’s empty plates, refilled her coffee and sat a new mug in front of the man and filled his cup.

“What are you doing here dad?” Alex said her face stern, but her hands shaking as she held her coffee cup on the table. “You know I can arrest you. Right here. Right now.”

“Wow! Is that any way to treat your father after what six years?” Jeremiah Danvers said smiling. “I’ve missed you. I’m glad you and Kara are still finding time to meet and bond.”

“What do you want?” Alex said through gritted teeth understanding that he had been watching them at least this morning, if not longer.

“Alex, my dear. Please. You know I’ve always kept tabs on you and your life. You are my daughter and I want the best for you,” Jeremiah said. “It’s why I’ve done so much for you.”

“Dad, the only thing you’ve done for me is played on my emotions so I did not shoot you when you stole from the U.S. Government and endangered hundreds of lives,” Alex said and straightened up in her side of the booth. “I’m tempted to call this in now and have you arrested for treason and a dozen other charges since I haven’t seen you.”

“Alex, I’ve only had your best interests at heart. Trust me. Everything I do has been for your happiness. Your mother as well. Speaking of, how is she?” Jeremiah said. “I know she’s been seeing Mr. Tyree, your algebra teacher. I hope they get along well. She deserves someone to be with her and comfort her since I’m not able to do so.”

“What?!” Alex said. “You are watching mom too?”

“Oh Alex, you have no idea what I’ve been up to, but I hope you understand it and appreciate it,” Jeremiah said and sipped more his coffee. “I mean I gave you everything you ever wanted and you still haven’t taken it. Why is that?”

“What are you talking about?” Alex clenched through her teeth. “What have you done now?”

Laughing and looking out the diner’s broad windows, “What haven’t I done for you?” he said rhetorically.

Sitting up straighter, Jeremiah leaned toward Alex on the table and moved his coffee to the side of the white Formica table.

“Alex, I gave you everything you had wished and hoped for. Why haven’t you reconciled with Maggie by now? She is your soulmate and the kids’ debate was the only reason you both agreed you couldn’t be together. And now, well now that’s taken care of and those kids are phenomenal as is Maggie,” Jeremiah said. “You know I could do the same for you. It’s painful, but if you want to level the playing field between you and Kara and Maggie now. I know how to successfully do it and it’s safe. I mean you saw how Maggie adjusted. And those kids will be amazing. Project TAD was such a success. One of my best yet.”

“Dad, how could you? Why would you?” Alex said bitterly. “Project TAD? What is that?”

“Alex, I did it for you. Project TAD is Titans for Alex Danvers. These little super babies are the best in the world. I perfected them for you. They are the smartest, the strongest and best in the entire galaxy, even better than Kara,” Jeremiah said. “My whole project with Maggie was for you, for her too, although I suppose she will never understand that. I used a bit of your DNA as well as Kara’s to make them. It’s really fascinating when you think about it.”

The man’s smile was so genuine like a father who had seen his daughter excel and he had taught her how to do so and now it was her graduation day. He took the last sip of his coffee.

Dumbfounded, Alex was speechless. Her mouth gaped open. 

It was then that the DEO backup arrived along with Supergirl. Alex didn’t even notice. She was still stunned at Jeremiah’s revelation.

“Oh Alex, I should’ve known this wouldn’t go as planned. Why would you call for backup?” Jeremiah said and jumped up to disappear out the backdoor.

He didn’t get but a block away before Kara and a dozen DEO agents confronted him. He willingly surrendered to them. 

Alex remained in the booth, gripping her coffee cup and staring ahead with a blank look. Her father was responsible for Maggie’s kidnapping, torture, and impregnation. How in the world was Alex supposed to tell Maggie this new information? How would Maggie not hate her even more now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your continued support. Here's an answer to some of your most popular question.


	26. Sorrow for me, joy for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kar, he caused all of this. This pain. For Maggie. Her girls,” Alex managed to say just above a whisper. “I can not ever call him my father after what he’s done.”
> 
> Not exactly understanding, Kara asked, “Alex, what do you mean?”
> 
> “He kidnapped Maggie. He impregnated her. He used your DNA to change her and our DNA for those kids. He said he did it all for me,” Alex sobbed.
> 
> Kara held her sister tighter. She knew Alex liked it when she held her tighter than a normal human.
> 
> Processing what Alex had said, Kara had a moment of recognition.
> 
> “Wait, so Jeremiah was behind everything that happened to Maggie?” Kara asked as she held Alex at arm’s length so she could look her in the eyes.
> 
> “Yes,” Alex said as her eyes darted down with regret. “He did it all for me, so we could have children. Super children from you.”
> 
> Her eyes grew wide and she gasps on the air.
> 
> “So, you mean those girls are mine?” Kara said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter less than 24 hours later brought to you by the flu. You are welcome that I've been quarantined at home from work this week, but I return to real life tomorrow.  
> I've often thought this week that 'man if I had the time oh the things I could write.' But maybe that was all the drugs and fever, but still, I hope you enjoy the recent updates.  
> If you are starting here, go back a couple of chapters because the updates have been quick this week.

Alex personally booked Jeremiah into the DEO and made sure he had an escape-proof cell in the basement. He continued to plead with her that he did nothing wrong. That it was all for her and her happiness.

She was numb.

Alex’s phone lit up with a text from Emma. She was supposed to check in after the mission. But Alex had just forgotten. It was now 11 a.m. and Alex only replied that the day had taken a terrible turn and she’d be stuck at work for a while for the unforeseeable future. Emma just replied with an “OK. Be safe. ILY” and that made Alex feel even worse.

Emma didn’t know the real details of the things Alex dealt with and now how could she understand that her father was a monster. His time with Lillian Luthor had changed him, changed his moral compass.

They would never get him back. Alex realized that tidbit as she saw him pacing his cell on the monitor in her office while she slouched in her chair.

It would be only moments before Supergirl burst into the room, Alex thought. And sure enough 36 seconds later Kara opened the door and sat down across from Alex.

“What happened?” Kara said in a soft voice while she played with the end of her cape in her lap. “I didn’t know Jeremiah was even in town let alone stalking you.”

“Yeah, I didn’t either,” Alex said and blew out all the air in her lungs. “Kar, it’s bad. It’s really bad. What he has done is deplorable. I can’t even. I don’t know where to begin. How to say it. How to apologize.”

Alex had begun to hyperventilate so Kara was at her side and holding her head down toward her knees to help her breathing. Ten minutes later Alex was sitting on the couch in her office while Kara kept an arm around her, trying to soothe her.

Kara had never seen Alex so distraught, even when she and Maggie had broken up. This was something new because it took an hour before Alex could even drink a sip of water. She curled up on the couch and Kara just held her that afternoon. Alex didn’t even notice when Kara sent out text messages that she wouldn’t be coming back to work. Kara also sent a text to Maggie explaining that the latest case at the DEO would sideline her for a while. She failed to mention Jeremiah Danvers was that case. 

Maggie had taken the girls to the aquarium that day and told Kara to stop by when she was done, no matter the time.

Maggie decided an early night for her girls was called for, so she finished their afternoon at the aquarium and skipped their planned dinner by the docks. Back the apartment for food, baths and then bedtime routine of some playtime and then stories.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was near 5 p.m. when Alex finally spoke. Her eyes had been zoned out the entire day. She had calmed down, but her state told Kara that something major had occurred between her and Jeremiah.

“Kar, he caused all of this. This pain. For Maggie. Her girls,” Alex managed to say just above a whisper. “I can not ever call him my father after what he’s done.”

Not exactly understanding, Kara asked, “Alex, what do you mean?”

“He kidnapped Maggie. He impregnated her. He used your DNA to change her and our DNA for those kids. He said he did it all for me,” Alex sobbed.

Kara held her sister tighter. She knew Alex liked it when she held her tighter than a normal human.

Processing what Alex had said, Kara had a moment of recognition.

“Wait, so Jeremiah was behind everything that happened to Maggie?” Kara asked as she held Alex at arm’s length so she could look her in the eyes.

“Yes,” Alex said as her eyes darted down with regret. “He did it all for me, so we could have children. Super children from you.”

Her eyes grew wide and she gasps on the air.

“So, you mean those girls are mine?” Kara said.

“Yes, they are. A mixture of me and you. And well Maggie too,” Alex said. “But I already knew that. From the tests when they were saved.”

“Wait. What?” Kara said and released her hold on Alex. “You already knew those girls were part mine and you didn’t tell me?”

Standing up and rubbing her forehead, a tick she had picked up from Maggie all those years ago, “Yes, I knew when we did the DNA tests on the girls when they arrived. They are a perfect mixture of Maggie, you and me.”

“Alex! How could you not tell me those girls are part mine? That they are my children?” Kara shouted and begun to pace the room. “How could you keep that from me? I mean I knew Maggie was transformed, but those girls have my DNA.”

Kara’s eyes welled with tears.

“I have two children. Two girls,” Kara said continuing to pace at near superspeed. “They are mine.”

“And mine,” Alex added. “Jeremiah made them out of both of us. You to give them the super abilities and you to give Maggie the super talents as well, but me too.”

“Oh my!” Kara said and covered her mouth. “We have to go to Maggie. Now.”

“Kara, no. We can’t yet,” Alex said. “We can’t just barge in and say we are the other mothers of her children. That they are Kryptonian. As she is now. We can’t do that yet. I need time to think. To figure all this out and if he had any other hidden agendas with this.”

“Maggie already knows she is like me. She understands she’s not a normal human anymore, so she will understand. She deserves to know what happened,” Kara said. “She deserves to know that her daughters are ours. Mine. I won’t ever abandon them. She needs to know that.”

“I can’t just go to her apartment and tell her that you and I are the other mothers, fathers or whatever it is you want to call it to her children,” Alex spat angrily. “How am I supposed to tell her my father forced her to have two children for me? How can I tell her he stole all those years and life away from her and forced this on her? How can I do this to her after all I have done to her? I’m the one who broke up with her. I forced her out of our apartment. I abandoned her. I gave up when she disappeared. I was so selfish.”

Alex sunk down and cried.

“Kara, I can’t do this to her,” Alex sobbed. “I can’t be the reason she’s suffered again.”

Kara held Alex and rocked her on the floor of Alex’s office. They sat there into the evening. No one bothered them. 

Both their phones were on the desk and on silent. Kara had switched them earlier to give Alex a break. How would the Danvers’ sisters come out of this one Kara didn’t know, but she did know she wanted to get to Maggie as soon as possible and explain everything. She ached to get there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you for your continued support.


	27. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was the last time, Alex decided that Maggie would show her a full dimpled smile and the last time she would likely be openly invited into Maggie’s home. Alex was basking in every moment before she had to speak about why she was there.

Alex talked Kara into not revealing the new facts to Maggie that night. 

It’ was after 1 a.m. before Alex walked into her apartment. She showered and then fell into bed with Emma. But she failed to sleep.

The things that were about to be divulged to Maggie would change everything. Alex had to tell Emma about them too. She didn’t know how that would work. 

Alex’s thoughts then drifted to what Kara had said during the evening. She didn’t know how things would change between them now that they had these children between them and Maggie.

Alex tossed and turned. Too much worry on her mind to let her sleep much.

The alarm blared at 6:30 a.m. and Emma rolled into Alex and begun to kiss her after shutting off the alarm. It was something Alex would normally embrace, but today, she was stiff and woke immediately. She kissed Emma’s forehead and then rolled away to get out of bed for a shower.

Emma noticed the change and got up as well. She started their coffee and then went to join Alex in her shower. She thought the case was just tough and Alex needed more love and affection as she sometimes had in the past.

But when Alex asked her to give her time in the shower alone, Emma knew something had changed. Leaning against the kitchen counter, Emma waited for Alex to leave the bathroom.

“So, what’s going on Alex?” Emma said her hand outstretched with a cup of coffee. Taking it and smiling slightly, Alex didn’t know where to begin. She walked around their kitchen counter and sat down.

“I. It. A lot of things happened yesterday that I’m still trying to process. I still don’t know myself,” Alex answered honestly. “It has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with me and things I’ve done before I met you. Things with my family and their nefarious intentions. You must trust me that I can’t speak of it yet, but as soon as I can I will tell you everything.”

“Ok. But don’t shut me out,” Emma said and her voice sunk a bit before she continued. “I can be here for you without knowing any of that classified information. And I don’t care what your family has done, Alex. You are the person I love. You are a good person.”

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that anymore,” Alex mumbled. Emma walked around the kitchen counter and put her arms around Alex and kissed her cheek.

“You are to me,” Emma whispered and kissed Alex’s ear before she walked to the bathroom for a shower.

Emma had no idea or could dream of the things that were transpiring. She knew something as amiss, but the scope of it was something she never dreamed.

It would be a while before Emma got the full story.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Across town, Maggie had woken and checked her phone. No messages.

The sparse text messages she received from Kara the day before had her worried. She went to make coffee.

Maggie had coffee and her girls had woken and demanded breakfast, so she went to eggs, fruit and toast for them since Kara had failed to show up for their morning routine. She made a game of it and sang while she scrambled the eggs and put jelly on their toast. Avery loved the moments, but Addison just sat in her high chair and watched with her big blue eyes tracking Maggie’s every movement. The baby would clap and giggle when all the attention turned to her, but she was much more reserved than her sister who openly danced in the kitchen with their mother.

Once the girls were eating, Maggie texted the Superhero.

“Are you ok? We missed you for the morning breakfast routine.” Maggie also sent a photo of the girls eating fresh strawberries she had picked up at the grocery store the day before. Avery had her little cheeks stuffed with two pieces to look like a chipmunk. Addison was biting a piece with her big blue eyes looking straight into the camera.

Kara read the text from her bed but never moved. She got teary-eyed at the photo. Of course, those girls were hers. How could she miss their resemblance? They had blonde hair and Kara’s blue eyes, but Maggie’s skin tone and dimples.

Kara just stared at the photo and cried more.

What could she say to Maggie? She still struggled with how she was going to wait on Alex to be able to tell Maggie that they knew so much more about her captivity and her daughters.

Kara texted Alex after clicking from Maggie’s message. 

“We have to tell her today,” Kara texted.

“We don’t. Not yet. I need more time to think about this,” Alex responded.

“No. It’s not a good idea to keep waiting,” Kara said. “She deserves to know.”

“Kara, it’s not as black and white as you think,” Alex responded.

“I need to be honest with Maggie and I can’t even go to face her right now like I do every morning. I want to be there with them,” Kara texted without thinking about the implications. 

“Oh really?” Alex replied. “You do?”

“It’s where I need to be. Whether you realize that now or later, you have a right to be there too, Alex. We can’t ignore this especially since you kept this from us for so long,” Kara texted back. “Maggie needs me and us. Those girls need us. They’ve already been through so much. They shouldn’t have to wait for us to be honest with them about this.”

“Ok. I’ll meet you at the DEO and then we will go see Maggie,” Alex sent back.

“K,” with a smiley face emoji Kara replied and jumped up to shower and dress for the day. She fired off a text to Snapper that she needed a personal day and would check in later in the afternoon to see what her next assignment would be.

As usual, he never replied.

But life wouldn’t be that easy. Before the Danvers’ sisters could even meet at the DEO, they had to battle a deadly parasite that had surfaced in the college district of National City.

Ten hours later the women were sitting exhausted in Alex’s office again. Kara lounged on the couch while Alex sat at her desk.

“I need to talk to Maggie. Alone. To explain what’s happened. What Jeremiah did to her, to us,” Alex said. 

“No, Alex. I need to be there. We both need to do this. She needs us both,” Kara said rising up off the couch.

“No! Kara, you don’t understand. I will do this. After I’m done you can go to her, but you cannot be there when I tell her everything,” Alex stood and said sternly.

“But I want to be there for support. She will need that,” Kara said.

“Kara, I won’t allow her to hate you. She can hate me, but not you,” Alex said defeated.

“Why. Why would she hate me?” Kara asked meekly not understanding the gravity of the situation that Alex had already figured out. “She wouldn’t hate me. Or you. She couldn’t. She won’t.”

Raising a hand to stop Kara’s rambling, Alex stepped from behind her desk and said, “Kar, just let me handle it. Please.”

Alex knew that Maggie would need someone to blame initially, someone to hate. Alex was fine with being blamed. She had grown wiser since her time with Maggie and how life wasn’t always beautiful. Maggie had gotten that lesson as a teen, but it took Alex a lot longer and well, Kara was still learning, Alex thought.

Maggie was going on with her life. Her daughters demanded consistency and she couldn’t plan her time around Kara Danvers, Supergirl or anyone else. She couldn’t choose to lose herself in the foolishness of worry for someone else. The girls were her only priority. 

So, when Alex Danvers showed up at her door that evening with Happy Meals for the girls and takeout for Maggie and herself, Maggie knew something was stirring, especially since she hadn’t seen Kara for two days now.

Little did Maggie know that everything she had believed about her life recently was about to change.

But Maggie opened her door widely, smiled with her dimples on full show and invited Alex in after she had held up the bags of food and asked if they could have dinner. Clearing the table of some toys, Maggie went and got the girls from their room where Avery had been playing and Addison napping. 

Avery hugged Alex, but not as warmly and enthusiastically as Kara before they were settled in their chairs for the food. Alex was taken aback at how welcomed she felt into the Sawyer home.

She memorized every detail about the girls and how Avery asked questions. Alex realized that although the girls didn’t look anything like her, Avery had her inquisitive mind. Addison held her fries to share or smiled at Alex when she made them laugh. It could be the last time Alex was in the same room with those girls, partly her children. She wanted to cherish as much as she could. 

It was the last time, Alex decided that Maggie would show her a full dimpled smile and the last time she would likely be openly invited into Maggie’s home. Alex was basking in every moment before she had to speak about why she was there.

They finished their dinner and sat in the living room while the girls watched cartoons. The girls, mostly Avery, but Addison also butted in from time to time with a squeal, grunt or gibberish to get attention, held and steered the conversation between the adults.

Two hours had passed before Alex knew what had happened. Maggie quietly told Alex that it was time for the girls to get a bath.

“Do you want to stay and help?” Maggie said shyly.

“Ah, yeah, if that’s alright with you?” Alex said surprise written on her face and dripping in her voice. “I’d enjoy that.”

“Ok babies, time for a bath,” Maggie announced louder and got the attention of her children.

“Aw Moma, come on one more cartoon,” Avery said. “Pleze.”

Two sets of big blue eyes staring and pleading for more time.

Alex melted right there. Those girls looked like the perfect mixture of Kara and Maggie at that moment. Both women’s pouts were in full effect.  
Alex also realized that she would do anything to watch them grow up. They were her children too.

Maggie didn’t budge. She turned to go to the bathroom with Addison in her arms. Avery had walked up to Alex and took her hand.

“You come too. Help me?” she said gripping Alex’s hand with what felt like more strength than a 3-year-old should have. But then again, Alex didn’t know how strong a 3-year-old should actually be. She had no reference for any of it. 

They went through the bath routine. Alex mostly watched from the doorway and reveled in watching Maggie interact with the girls. She was a natural.

Alex always knew Maggie would be a natural as a mother. She was so kind and caring. Alex felt herself falling all over for Maggie watching the scene before her. How could she not love this woman? And now with her children? Their children?

Once the girls were tucked in their beds. They started in separate bedrooms but eventually were moved to one, so they could find comfort in each other. Maggie often found the girls in one another’s beds, cuddled up together.

Back in the living room, Alex paced in front of the couch. Maggie stopped at the end of the hallway and watched. She sensed this was not a good sign. So, to delay, Maggie walked out and said, “I’m thinking of having a birthday party for Addison next week. As far as I could count, because you know the days didn’t really make sense in that dungeon, I believe she turns one. And I thought if you would like to come to the park to celebrate that would be great. I’ve seen other little kids have their parties there and I thought it would be nice.”

Alex’s breath caught in her lungs. Sensing the panic, Maggie continued, “Look you don’t have to. I was going to talk to Kara and J’onn about it, but I haven’t seen them in a few days. I just thought they might like it if you came.”

“Maggie, we have to talk first. Now. And I don’t know if you will want me to attend afterward, but I’d love to come to Addison’s birthday party. Avery’s too when you have one for her. But you are their mother and all those decisions I defer to you,” Alex said slowly.

“Alex, what’s going on?” Maggie asked her eyebrow raised.

“Please sit and let me explain,” Alex said and sat down on the far end of the couch. She began to explain what was easiest, the test results of their DNA and then continued until she ended with the meeting and arrest of Jeremiah Danvers.

Kara sat atop the roof of Maggie’s building, a place she had spent many an hour monitoring the woman, listening to Alex explain the recent revelations with Jeremiah and Maggie and her children.

It was the most difficult conversation Kara had ever eavesdropped on since she had come to Earth and that included many uncomfortable encounters with Alex, and initially Maggie and Alex when they first started dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who continues to read and indulge me in this story. You are greatly appreciated!


	28. A sky with no blue for that moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How could he? Did you know that he had done all this? God, Alex you father orchestrated this entire thing,” Maggie said and rubbed her forehead. “He caused all of this.”
> 
> Alex remained silent allowing Maggie to process.
> 
> “The girls, my girls are yours and Kara’s too?” Maggie asked and her voice quivered as her hand crushed the dining room chair top she was using to balance herself to remain standing. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.  
> Alex stared at Maggie and shook her head to confirm.
> 
> “You father caused all of this. He was the one. I mean I saw him there. He spoke to me, many times, but I always thought it was Lillian Luthor who caused it all, not him. How could he?” Maggie said.
> 
> “Yes, it was all him, according to what he told me,” Alex said. “I don’t know where he came up with the idea or why. You are Kryptonian now. That’s why it didn’t kill you as a human to have them. He transformed you before he impregnated you. They are Kryptonian too. I would imagine they carry little of my DNA, but more so of yours and Kara’s.”
> 
> Alex bowed her head at the last revelation.

Holding her hands up, Maggie asked Alex to leave after everything had been revealed to her.

“Is that it? If so, please leave Agent Danvers,” Maggie said coldly.

Defeated, Alex turned to walk out the door. Out of habit, Alex clicked the lock on the door behind her and went to her vehicle with the conversation replaying in her head from minutes earlier.

“What do you mean Jeremiah kidnapped me?” Maggie had asked.

“He thought that by forcing you to birth two children would bring us back together, get us closer, together. He thought that by changing you and then forcing you to have the children I wanted that we would automatically get back together and live happily ever after,” Alex said carefully choosing her words. “He also said he knew how much I cared for Kara, so why not create super babies and you.”

“How could he? Did you know that he had done all this? God, Alex you father orchestrated this entire thing,” Maggie said and rubbed her forehead. “He caused all of this.”

Alex remained silent allowing Maggie to process.

“The girls, my girls are yours and Kara’s too?” Maggie asked and her voice quivered as her hand crushed the dining room chair top she was using to balance herself to remain standing. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.  
Alex stared at Maggie and shook her head to confirm.

“You father caused all of this. He was the one. I mean I saw him there. He spoke to me, many times, but I always thought it was Lillian Luthor who caused it all, not him. How could he?” Maggie said.

“Yes, it was all him, according to what he told me,” Alex said. “I don’t know where he came up with the idea or why. You are Kryptonian now. That’s why it didn’t kill you as a human to have them. He transformed you before he impregnated you. They are Kryptonian too. I would imagine they carry little of my DNA, but more so of yours and Kara’s.”

Alex bowed her head at the last revelation.

“I never did the test to see their composition, but I can if you want me to do so,” Alex nearly whispered.  
Because as much as she had loved the thought that the girls were some part of her and Maggie, she couldn’t deny that they both were spitting images of Maggie and Kara. Her genetics were nowhere to be found at first glance, but for a blood test.

Panic rose in Maggie’s chest at the mention of more tests. It was all too much. She couldn’t.

“LEAVE. NOW,” Maggie shouted and startled Alex. Kara even jumped from her perch on the roof at the shout.

“OK. Just digest it all and we will talk again soon, OK?” Alex said her hands in front of her, but her shoulders slumped.

She mumbled to Maggie that she would be around if she needed anything, but Alex knew her sister had formed a better bond with her ex-fiancé than anything she had with her or her children.

Avery heard the shout and toddled into the living room to find her mother crying on the couch.

“Moma, you K?” Avery said and startled Maggie. She scooped up the little girl and carried her to her own bedroom. Maggie then went and got Addison from her bed, the baby never woke.  
From the roof, Kara cried. She wanted to go in and comfort Maggie and Avery, as well as follow Alex to soothe her tears. Deciding Maggie needed some time, Kara followed Alex’s vehicle.

Alex circled the city twice before she ended up on the edge of town in the desert. Kara dropped down next to the vehicle and tapped on the driver’s side window. Alex jumped, reached for her Glock, but then recognized Kara as Supergirl and realized she should have known the woman was following her. Alex motioned around and Kara got into the passenger seat.

Alex had been crying the entire drive. Her eyes were swollen and red. Her cheeks stained with tears.

Looking up at Kara after fiddling with her hands in her lap, Alex said through thick emotion in her voice, “Kar, what do we do now?”

“We love them. We take care of them,” Kara said and held a sobbing Alex. 

Kara had driven Alex home, walked her into the apartment and to Emma’s arms. Kara explained that Alex had called her and there were some recent revelations regarding Jeremiah Danvers that Alex would have to talk about when she was ready. Kara asked Emma to not push Alex on this because it was life-altering for them.

Emma nodded and decided tonight she would just hold Alex and comfort her.

Kara flew back to Maggie’s building and spied her and the girls asleep in Maggie’s bed. Feeling exhausted, Kara went to her apartment and collapsed in her bed.

The next morning found Alex up bright and early with determination in her eyes. She avoided Emma’s questions as she left at 6 a.m. for the DEO. She made her way down to Jeremiah’s cell and questioned him relentlessly for the next two hours.

That led her to a storage building where she blew the door off the unit Jeremiah said he stashed his research on Project TAD. Alex marveled at the boxes of research. She ordered it all loaded up and returned to the DEO, to her lab and the director’s private conference room.

Across town, Maggie went about the day as if nothing had occurred less than 12 hours earlier that shook her to the core. She had to be composed and peaceful for her daughters. They ate breakfast and then went to the park.  
Kara had blown off work for two days, so she went in to get her scolding from Snapper. She got two assignments and dove into them to keep her mind off her sister and the Sawyer family.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was nearing dinner when Kara decided to reach out to Maggie. Kara had finished her articles in record time and still had two days before they were due. At least something was cooperating in Kara’s life, she thought.

Kara texted Maggie. “Takeout and talking?”

Maggie just texted a thumbs up emoji. She had been expecting this all day.

Kara was a bundle of nerves as she got Maggie’s favorite vegan Thai from a place down near the bay. She didn’t know what she would say to the woman, but she knew she had to try, try to build a relationship with her and those girls. 

Kara had lost her world and she wouldn’t lose the opportunity to be involved in the lives of her children now that she knew the truth. She had begged Alex to accompany her, to talk about what’s next and how Maggie is handling the new information. But she refused.

Kara worried Alex would end up with an empty bottle before the night was over. She decided to check on the woman later in the evening after she and Maggie spoke.

Some part of Kara understood that Maggie and Alex had to work on their own issues, but she didn’t understand why wait even longer to deal with this.

A knock on the door startled Maggie. Though she immediately saw it was Kara, she paused not understanding why the woman was using the door this time. Kara started to panic when Maggie paused thinking the woman didn’t want to see her because of her association with Jeremiah.

When Maggie opened the door, her face was blank any emotion as she allowed the superhero to come inside. The new visitor caught Addison’s attention immediately, the girl was always paying attention to everything going on around her and began to squeal from her bouncer. Chubby little legs stretched up and down to rock her body while her hands waved in front of her. The girl was well advanced for her age, though because of Maggie’s lack of experience with children she thought her children were on track to be normal. That was at least what the DEO doctors said after their rescue.

The noise caught Avery’s attention and she bolted upright to run and greet Kara. Maggie immediately reached for the bags in Kara’s hands because she knew the routine.

Kara would whisk the toddler up and spin her around, maybe floating a bit off the ground. Avery would squeal which delighted Kara even more and so she would continue and swoop the girl toward her sister, who would kick and clap and squeak with amusement. After a few minutes, Kara would grab Addison and do a similar dance, but it was much tamer than Avery’s. Kara was still a bit scared she would hurt the younger girl. It had been small steps to get Kara comfortable with touching the girls.

It was their routine whenever Kara would come into the apartment.

Maggie had seen the habit enough that she paid them no attention usually, but this time she stood just watching their antics and how the girls’ faces lit up to Kara. So much for being a good detective since she didn’t piece together her abilities and the resemblance of her daughters to Kara.

A tear slid down Maggie’s cheek and she immediately wiped it away, but Addison felt her mother’s emotions and began to reach for her while still in Kara’s arms. Kara noticed the reaction to their antics on Maggie’s face and brought the baby to her mother while telling Avery it was time to eat.

Maggie sat the bags on the counter, grabbed her baby and held her close. Kara walked past Maggie and took the bags to the table while Avery stood patiently waiting to get seated in her toddler chair at the table.

Addison just cuddled into her mom and Maggie began to cry. She had no idea why her emotions decided to poke their head out now. She was embarrassed that she couldn’t control it in front of Kara. So much had changed in these last few years that Maggie had wondered if she was even a semblance of the same person she once was.

“Moma, come eat. You favoright,” Avery shouted as Kara plated the food. The toddler was practically bouncing in her seat at the sight of food. Maggie smiled and thought that she was definitely Kara’s daughter. The girl always saw the best of everything, but she really didn’t have a right not to because she didn’t comprehend the gravity of what had resulted in her life. And the dungeon was the only way of life the girl knew until their freedom, so it was never a bother.

Looking down at Addison in her arms, Maggie said, “Are you ready to eat baby girl?” The girl cooed in her mother’s arms and Maggie walked over to the table. 

Once the girls were settled and passionately eating, Kara smiled at Maggie and said “Hi.”

“How are you doing?” she continued looking at Maggie as she held a forkful of food ready to bite it.

“Ok. Considering everything,” Maggie said then turned her attention to Avery, “Baby, how’s your nuggets?”

“Gooooooooood!” the girl replied. Addison didn’t even slow down eating but grunted in agreement.

The evening went on routine. Kara helped bathe the girls and get them to bed. It was a normal evening, but all so much sweeter for Kara now. She knew she wanted a family, but she didn’t know how or when it would ever be possible. Now, though she had two living little Kara’s before her to love, mold, teach and train in Kyptonian ways that she once believed would die with her.

Kara’s heart felt like it would burst out of her chest as she and Maggie quietly walked out of the girls’ room. She walked over to the window and wiped a tear that was threatening to fall. She knew she had to choose her words carefully now with Maggie.

“Thank you,” Maggie said and picked up some toys from the couch to deposit them a bin in the corner of the living room.

“What? I haven’t done anything but bring dinner,” Kara said. “Maggie, look I’m sorry for the”

“Stop. Don’t. This isn’t on you. I know you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to me and we both know we’ve resolved the whole ‘I should have rescued you sooner’ feelings. I want you to continue this. Dinners, breakfasts, days at the park,” Maggie said. “They need normalcy and you being here has created some of it. I want you to continue if you want to.

“As for what other role you should play or what we tell the girls, I think you, Alex and I need to sit down and discuss that,” Maggie said as she slumped down onto the couch. “It’s been a lot to take in and I’m still processing. But I’m not going to be the asshole who keeps someone from seeing their kid if, that is if you still want to be involved in their lives.”

“YES. Yes, I do,” Kara said too eagerly. She sped to the couch to sit by Maggie. “I do Maggie. I want to be there for them every step of the way, every minute I can. I’ve thought a lot about this situation since Jeremiah came back, and I dreamed about having a family, but I never really thought it would happen or how it would happen because I mean I’m Supergirl. Who in the right mind is going to want to have a child with a Superhero? Not to mention I haven’t had much luck finding a good suitor.”

Maggie smirked, “Trust me there would be a line around the block if you put yourself out there.”

“No. I don’t mean it like that. I mean,” Kara started and blushed.

“I know what you mean Kara. I just need to know if you are all in or not. I’m not allowing you or Alex to come in, become a part of their lives, introduce you as their parents too and then have you drift out when you find someone to love and start a family with. This, this is my family now and I won’t allow them to be hurt if I can prevent it,” Maggie said. “I want you to seriously think about this. I’m not going to allow anyone to walk out on them like. Well, let’s just say you will have hell to pay if you decide being a parent isn’t something you want to do after you’ve committed to them. That also includes stop doing reckless stunts when you are Supergirl.”

Grabbing Maggie’s arm, Kara sincerely looked at the woman, who looked more like her former self than she had in a long time. That fiery detective ready to protect the people she loved until her last breath was there before Kara.

Smiling, Kara said, “Maggie, you have my word that I’ll be committed to those girls until my last breath. To you too. You have to understand that knowing there are two little girls who share my DNA, I would do anything for them and to keep them safe and that includes being there for them no matter what. For you too. You are just as important to me because you birthed these babies and you too share my DNA now. I will protect the Sawyer family because you are my own now.”

Tears spilled onto Maggie’s cheeks because she genuinely believed Kara and knew the hero would stop at nothing for those people she loved. Maggie had never truly been a part of that circle until now.

Kara realized her world, family had always just been Alex, but now she was expanding it. She had been since those initial encounters at the DEO when Maggie and the girls were rescued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who is sticking with me on this story. Your kudos and comments mean everything!


	29. Love, Space Dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maggie, I am truly sorry about everything with Alex and then your kidnapping and the events that followed. I hope you know you can always come to me and I will be there for you and your daughters,” J’onn said. “I would be honored to play an active role in their lives if you will allow it. I understand you are their mother and I would never overstep your authority, but they are phenomenal little girls with a bright future. And I don’t mean their genetic makeup potential, I mean their mother is a remarkable woman who will raise two amazing daughters.”
> 
> Maggie blushed. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

The night with Kara went better than Maggie could have expected. The reporter agreed to return for breakfast.   
Their normal routine.

But sipping her coffee the next morning watching the Superhero entertain the girls in the living room, thanks to a rainy day, dread gnawed at Maggie. She worried about her next encounter with the other Danvers’ sister.

As if sensing the angst, Kara stood up and left the girls to play. Avery was flying a Supergirl action figure around the living room area as fast as her little chubby legs would carry her. Much to the amusement of Addison who was clapping and starting to speak and kept saying “Moe. Moe.”

“I can ask Alex to meet us, somewhere neutral. I’m sure J’onn or Vasquez wouldn’t mind watching the girls for a couple of hours, so we can talk to her about what you expect and our roles. It will give her an understanding of what you require for them so she can decide what she wants,” Kara said. 

“Thank you, Kara, but it’s not that easy for her. She’s with someone and suddenly having two children isn’t something that she can go home and say ‘hey, guess what I have two daughters with my ex-fiancé and my sister,’” Maggie said and laughed bitterly. “Has she even told Emma the whole truth about herself? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. It’s not my place. It’s so ironic that they are a part of you and Alex. I mean that’s what drove Alex and me apart and now I’m standing here waiting to see if she wants to come back into my life for two children.”

“I know, but you have to try at least. I mean to give her an opportunity to see if she wants to get to know her daughters too,” Kara whispered. The women were talking as quietly as possible because they were unsure if Avery had her super hearing yet or not. Although they both had discussed that she likely wouldn’t understand a lot of what had happened or remember it. 

“I guess, you are right,” Maggie said. “But I know what it’s like to have Alex Danvers kick you out of her life and I won’t allow them to experience that. It’s all or nothing.”

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The next day found Maggie at the DEO while Kara watched the girls. Kara didn’t agree with Maggie going there, but she conceded that Maggie had a right to do so.

At the front desk, the agent waved Maggie through recognizing her immediately. She smiled and strolled to J’onn’s office. He was expecting her. She called the previous day asking to speak to him about the situation and Jeremiah Danvers’ hold. She was pleased when he agreed with her about being discreet with her visit.

“Maggie, please come in and have a seat,” J’onn said and stood to walk around his desk to greet her. He felt the fear, anxiety, and twist of emotions rolling off of the woman. “Agent Danvers took one of her many stored vacation days today, in case you were wondering.”

“Ah. Yes. I was. I mean. I didn’t want to run into her like this. I want to talk to her. Just with a planned meeting and more organized thoughts,” Maggie realized she was rambling. “Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me. I value your opinion J’onn and in light of the recent developments, I’d like to get your outlook. You have always been a voice of reason and so kind to me before Al, ah, the breakup.”

“Maggie, I am truly sorry about everything with Alex and then your kidnapping and the events that followed. I hope you know you can always come to me and I will be there for you and your daughters,” J’onn said. “I would be honored to play an active role in their lives if you will allow it. I understand you are their mother and I would never overstep your authority, but they are phenomenal little girls with a bright future. And I don’t mean their genetic makeup potential, I mean their mother is a remarkable woman who will raise two amazing daughters.”

Maggie blushed. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

“Yes, I’d like it if you were a part of their lives. I don’t really have a family, especially a father figure for them to learn from and look up to, so I would be grateful for your role in their lives. All I ask is consistency,” Maggie said. “We both understand the pain of having family ripped away from our lives and I want to avoid that agony for them as much as possible. I know hurt is inevitable in this life, but if I can place the right people in their lives and teach them the right values, then I can hopefully lessen the damage of any suffering they will face.”

“Understood and absolutely,” J’onn said with a smile. “I’m honored to be whatever you will allow me to be with them.” 

“Speaking of that role, I would like to schedule a time to talk with Alex, alone, and I thought maybe you and Kara could watch the girls. There are some things I want to speak to Alex about without Kara and then there are things we all three need to discuss depending on how my chat with Alex goes first. If you are up for some dirty diaper duty and cartoon watch parties,” Maggie said. 

“That sounds like a delightful evening. I’m at your beck and call,” J’onn said.

“Good. On that subject, did you know about their DNA before I left here? I mean did you know Kara and Alex were a part of them or their DNA donors,” Maggie rubbed her forehead. “I don’t even know what to call them, how am I to explain this to a 3-year-old and 1-year-old?”

Laughing and getting up from behind his desk, J’onn came to sit in a chair next to Maggie. He placed a comforting hand on her forearm, “When my daughters, Kimberly and Tonya, were babies I panicked about every little thing at first. They were just like your girls with only 18 months separating them. As they grew, things leveled out and I realized that my wife and I were making it up as we went because we didn’t know what was coming our way next or how the girls were going to respond to a situation.

“So, you will figure it out and make it up as you go. I’m always here to help whether that be diaper duty, a sounding board or a shoulder for you to lean on. Rely on Kara and Alex too, if they want to be involved. I understand Kara has already been there and I suspected that once your powers kicked in, you would rely on her more, which you did, correct?”

“Yes, we have a better relationship now than when Alex and I were together,” Maggie said.

“She will do the best she can ever time, but she’s still learning too. Take comfort in her presence,” J’onn said. “As for Alex, I haven’t been able to speak to her or feel anything from her lately. She’s shut down a lot since you were rescued. And that’s not your fault. Please don’t take it that way. She has yet to deal with some things that I suspect she buried after you two broke up. But she will come around. She always does.”

“Honestly, J’onn, I know she’s like a daughter to you,” Maggie said.

“You all three are daughters to me, Maggie,” he said and smiled. “I mean that sincerely. No matter what happens with you and the Danvers’ sisters.”

“Thank you,” Maggie smiled back. “But she withheld some of the information and I wonder if she was ever going to tell me. I’m also concerned because I don’t want her and her girlfriend coming in thinking they have a ready-made family now. Which brings me to my next topic, I want to set up some legal boundaries for her and Kara.”

“That makes sense, but tread carefully with Kara because she wears her heart on her sleeve and you understand that,” he said. “Maggie, you’ve done so well readjusting and being a mother that I couldn’t be prouder than if you were my own daughter. I understand it was not the best circumstances, but you face challenges head-on as you always have, and I’m glad to see that Detective Sawyer still exists after everything.”

Maggie blushed again and bowed her head. 

“I know a lawyer who deals with family issues and she would be more than willing to sit down and talk to you about your unusual circumstances. I actually figured you would want some formal paperwork and I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of contacting her explaining just some of the basics. She deals with a lot of alien issues too, so she understands remarkable families,” J’onn said. “Let me get you her information.”

As he stood and went to his desk for a piece of paper Maggie felt a weight lift from her chest that she didn’t even know she had been lugging around. Having J’onn in her corner felt right and she knew he would keep his word about the girls. They always delighted to see him and would grow to love him just as she had.

J’onn gave her the lawyer’s contact information and Maggie stood, “I have one more question about Jeremiah Danvers.”

“Ok,” he said.

“Is he still here at the DEO?” Maggie said, a new emotional tenacity on her face. “Can I have a word him?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for continuing to read this story and commenting.


	30. God, Hit Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Without a word, Maggie walked into the room and sat across from Jeremiah Danvers. She didn’t speak at first and the silence dragged on for several minutes before he finally broke.  
> “I don’t know what it is you think I should be so apologetic about. I assume that’s why you are here in front of me. To get an apology. I have no regrets about what I did,” Jeremiah said and smiled.  
> The corners of his mouth looked just like Alex when she was ecstatic about something. It infuriated Maggie.  
> “I could’ve just ended it all for you. No reconciliation with Alex, no family. Your life, your future and there would be no Avery or Addison,” he said.

After much discussion between J’onn and Maggie, he finally agreed to allow her 10 minutes to speak the man. He ordered six agents to bring Jeremiah up from his dungeon of a cell to an interview room at the end of the hallway. The agents, five men, and one woman stayed in the room with Jeremiah and were ordered not to leave, best Jeremiah tries to make an escape.

Unbeknownst to Maggie, J’onn had not planned to allow her to see Jeremiah Danvers, let alone be in the same room with him. Once she learned he remained at the city base, Maggie was hellbent on seeing Jeremiah before he was moved to a more permanent home at the desert base.

After J’onn searched her mind a bit, he understood the reasoning she wasn’t conveying with her speech. This was some closure that Maggie needed and nothing was going to stop her to confront the man who had caused her so much torture.

Without a word, Maggie walked into the room and sat across from Jeremiah Danvers. She didn’t speak at first and the silence dragged on for several minutes before he finally broke.

“I don’t know what it is you think I should be so apologetic about. I assume that’s why you are here in front of me. To get an apology. I have no regrets about what I did,” Jeremiah said and smiled.

The corners of his mouth looked just like Alex when she was ecstatic about something. It infuriated Maggie.

“I could’ve just ended it all for you. No reconciliation with Alex, no family. Your life, your future and there would be no Avery or Addison,” he said.

“Don’t you ever allow their names to come from your mouth,” Maggie said snarling at him. “I’m not done with you. Just when you think your life is going well, I’ll be there to destroy it. No matter what.”

Maggie stood.

Jeremiah, shackled and handcuffed to a chain around his waist also stood. The agents in the room straightened themselves and one moved closer to stand behind Jeremiah.

“Oh, Detective Sawyer, I have given you everything and this is how you repay me? Threatening me and my life?” Jeremiah smirked. “Just think we will always be connected. In-laws of sorts. You owe me. You will realize that soon.”

Maggie decked him. Her Kryptonian strength on full display.

It all happened so quickly that none of the agents reacted until he was on the ground groaning that she had broken his nose and knocked two teeth loose. J’onn didn’t even see that one coming. He held a hand up to his mouth to hide the smile of a proud dad. With her super powers, Maggie was so fast that J’onn knew the agents would watch replays on the surveillance system of this moment for days. 

Maggie straightened her jacket. She could see Jeremiah on the floor through to the table that had separated them, and she knew she made her point. Without a word, she turned and left.

J’onn ordered the agents to return Jeremiah to his cell. Blood gushed from his broken nose, mouth and he’d likely suffer two black eyes from the fierce well-placed punch.

She might be tiny, but oh how she is mighty, J’onn thought as he followed Maggie to his office.

“How can he sit there and be so smug and nice? Like he did something great. Like he didn’t ruin my life,” Maggie shouted and paced the office as J’onn closed the door. Her real feelings coming through and she felt terrible for those words immediately when they left her mouth.

Her body wracked with emotions only a second before, she froze at the words.

“God, I’m such an asshole,” she said rubbing her forehead. “I never wanted this. I was fine leaving Alex alone and being myself. I didn’t ask for these kids or these powers. I never wanted any of it.”

She broke down and sobbed against J’onn’s chest just inside the doorway. Maggie didn’t notice Alex sitting on the couch in J’onn’s office waiting for him. But now, she was on her feet and standing inches away from Maggie.

Alex had abandoned her leave form and the nondisclosure forms on the couch. She had come in to ask for some personal time. She had enough of it saved up to use. Hell, she could go the next nine months and not work a day thanks to all the comp time and sick days she had accrued over the years. Not even mentioning the vacation time. She could go well for more than a year.

She also had been to Pam in HR to get nondisclosure forms for Emma to sign. It was time to tell the woman the truth about everything and Alex knew she had to have the forms signed. 

Vasquez had told her to wait in J’onn’s office because she thought Maggie would leave after confronting Jeremiah. She tried to give Maggie privacy during her visit and Alex peace of mind in not knowing that Maggie was there.

Vasquez had errored on an assumption that she could keep their paths from crossing. But to make up for it she immediately found the video of Maggie punching Jeremiah and sent it to the phones of Alex and Kara. She saved the video to share with Maggie but knew the woman needed to calm down first. This was the stuff legends were made of and Vasquez laughed at the similarities of Alex’s punch to Malverne and Maggie punching Jeremiah.

They were badass legends.

Vasquez put the punches in a file side by side, played them, and then realized that Maggie pulled back at the last second so as to not kill Jeremiah. The general population of the DEO agents didn’t know Maggie possessed the same abilities as Supergirl. But Vasquez had made the discovery.

She watched the video at least 20 times and marveled at the control Maggie showed over her strength. She knew the woman was phenomenal, but now Vasquez was just fangirling. It definitely made the late night at the DEO with no missions more exciting, but sadly Vasquez couldn’t share the news with anyone because she knew there was a reason no one had been read in on the developments.

Although her texting with Kara made up for it. Vasquez had never seen Kara use so many emojis in one sentence. Then, she sent a photo of the girls curled up and sleeping on their Supergirl.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Maggie came back to herself and heard Alex’s heartbeat right behind her as she was comforted by J’onn. Startled, she whipped around and was less than an inch away from Alex’s face.

“What are you doing here?” Maggie growled.

“I could ask you the same question,” Alex said her voice calm and concerned.

Maggie panicked and knew Alex had heard her outburst about the girls and her life, so she turned to J’onn.

“I’m sorry. But I should go. I’ll be in touch,” Maggie said before she sidestepped Alex and was quickly vanishing out the door and down the hallway. Superspeed helped so much.

Alex flustered and looked at J’onn, who motioned for her to go after Maggie. So, she sprinted out of the office and then all out ran down the hallway. It took her a few minutes before she caught up with Maggie at the exit where shift change had stalled Maggie’s movements thanks to a dozen or so agents leaving for the day. They all had to check out at the door, so Maggie was anxiously standing in a line of DEO agents.

Alex slid up beside her like she was Tom Cruise in Risky Business dancing to Bob Seger. 

“Maggie, please let’s talk,” Alex said panting because she was out of breath at having to chase the woman. “Just give me a few minutes. Please.”  
“Fuck,” Maggie said, rubbed her forehead. “Ok,” she said and stepped out of the line leaving the DEO. 

Alex sighed in relief. She knew she’d won the initial battle. Now, she had to convince Maggie she was not the enemy, no matter how much it felt that way. Maggie silently followed Alex back to her office. When the door clicked close, both women let out a breath they didn’t’ know they were holding.

“Look, Maggie, I heard what you said and I know you don’t mean any of it about the girls. I’m sorry you had to endure all of this, but please, know I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Alex said.

Still enraged, Maggie got into Alex’s personal space and said, “Really? Really. You didn’t know that your DNA was part of my girls long before Jeremiah showed up and disclosed the information. You withheld that information. What else are you not telling me, Alex? How can I possibly trust anything you say?”  
Stunned, Alex didn’t know what to say. 

“Look, Maggie, I didn’t tell you right away because I was trying to process everything. But I’m here now. Willing to answer any of your questions. Please, just let me,” Alex said.

“Oh really, ‘fessing up’ what else should you be telling me?” Maggie said.

Taking her cue, Alex sat down at her computer and pulled up several graphs to the large screen in the room.

“Maggie, I analyzed all your bloodwork and you are essentially a Kryptonian as if you were born on Krypton. We just recently got all of Jeremiah’s research notes and are combing through those as to how he did it, but he transformed you into the perfect version of Supergirl. You do not even have a weakness for Kyrptonite. Unlike Supergirl, she has a weakness to Kyrptonite. You have no known weakness. And based on the blood tests we did on the girls, they have no known weaknesses.

“You all are essentially Gods among us humans and most aliens on the planet. I believe there’s an unknown alien element in your blood, but I can’t identify it yet. Essentially, nothing could stop you thanks to that,” Alex whispered the last part. “He was able to create the perfect people with no known weaknesses. Trust me, I’ve ran every test imaginable. I tried to find anything I could that would hurt you and your genes. There’s nothing. I’ve done everything I could think of to test this.”

Stunned Maggie couldn’t do much but stare at the charts on the screen before her. (If she could ask for a bottle of scotch right now, Maggie would have and drown herself in it. But regular scotch wouldn’t make a difference anymore. She had tried one night after she put the girls to bed. What would normally make her hate life the next day didn’t even phase her.)

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you first before I told you the DNA results. I was trying to find a way to relay all of this. I mean it’s a lot to take in. I didn’t know how to tell you without sounding like a deranged scientist. I haven’t even told Kara yet all of this. She’s going to flip out,” Alex said.  
Maggie was speechless. She didn’t know what to say.

“Look, we have to tell Kara about all of this, but no one else,” Alex said and sat down next to her. “There is nothing on this planet or any known to the DEO that could hurt you or those girls. Nothing, Maggie. Do you understand that? I’m working to intercept Jeremiah’s research to prevent anyone else from figuring out how to do this. It’s huge. He figured it out and offered it to me.”

“I. No. Wait. What?” Maggie said. “You have all his research?”

“Yes, I haven’t been through it, but he offered me the opportunity to be like you when he confronted me in that in the diner the day when we arrested him,” Alex said. 

“I want to be able to view any videos he took. Of. Me. The girls. There.” Maggie said, her voice shaky. 

The hairs on Alex’s neck stood up because she knew Maggie knew more than she was saying about these videos.

“Ok. As I said, I haven’t been through the information. We only seized it and have moved it into J’onn’s conference room for privacy. But you can trust I will be the only person to see it.”

“NO. Please don’t,” Maggie said to stun Alex. “I don’t want even you to see that.”

“What. Ok. Sure. I won’t watch any videos. But I must review his notes and research. Maggie, he said he had perfected the procedure. He said it would hurt, but that I could do it too. To level the field with you and Kara now. And honestly, I have thought about it since then. I mean, if those girls are Kryptonian they will long outlive me as a human by many years. I want to be there for them. He did say I would hurt during the transformation. But I want to be there for them. And for you and Kara. If that’s alright.”

“Don’t,” Maggie said and touched Alex’s arm. “It’s excruciating. Please, Alex, don’t even think about doing that.”

“Maggie, you survived. I can tolerate just as much. I want to be there for Avery and Addison and if my life expectancy isn’t as long as theirs, I want to at least try to be there as long as I can. You have to understand that right now you and Kara will outlive me by at least a couple hundred years, if not more. The girls will surpass us by that by many if not more.”

Bowing her head, Maggie understood, but she wouldn’t wish any of what she’s been through on Alex, no matter the chance.

“Let’s talk about this later. I can’t even process you doing this right now Alex. I just need a bit more time, OK?” Maggie said.

“Sure,” Alex said and stepped back. 

Maggie disappeared out the door, but she did stop halfway out and turned toward Alex to smile.

Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
